^
CO DO
[£<OU_1 66938 ^
=5 CQ
OUP— 23-4-4-69— 5,000.
OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
This book shoul be returned on or before the date
last marked below.
POEMS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
POEMS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.G.
NEW YORK : 35 WEST 32ND STREET
TORONTO f, 25-27 RICHMOND STREET WEST
MELBOURNE: CATHEDRAL BUILDINGS
BOMBAY: HORNBY ROAD
1914
OXFORD : HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
CONTENTS
FAOB
THE SPHINX ........ 1
AND ALL . ,^ ...... 8
• ---• * --- * * ... • 8
To RHEA .......... >TE
THE VISIT ......... 14
URIEL .......... 16
THE WORLD -SOUL ....... 18
ALPHONSO OF CASTILE . . . . ^ . . .22
MlTHBIDATES ..... . . .25
To J. W .......... 27
FATE .......... 28
GUY .......... 30
TACT . . ~, ....... 32
33
. . ' ' . . . . 34
J&OOD-BYE . •i^'"' ...... 36
^
THE HtmOTE-BiffB ....... 39
BERRYING ......... 42
THE SNOW-STORM . ..... 43
WOODNOTES, I ........ 44
WOODNOTES, II ........ 60
MONADNOO ......... 63
FABLE ......... 77
ODE .......... 78
ASTRAEA ......... 83
ETIENNE DB LA BOECE ...... 84
StrtrM CTJIQUE ........ 85
£GMPENSATION ........ 86
FORBEARANCE ........ 87
THE PARK ....... 88
FORERUNNERS ........ 89
SURSUM OORDA ........ 91
ODB TO BEAUTY ........ 92
GIVJB ALL TO LOVE ....... 96
To ELLEN AT THE SOUTH ...... 93
To EVA ....... . 100
vi CONTENTS
PAGE
THE AMULET ....... .101
THINE EYES STILL SEINED . . . . *• . . 102
EBOS ......... . 103
HEBMIONB ......... 104
INITIAL, DAEMONIC, AND CELESTIAL LOVE . . . 107
IHE APOLOGY ........ 121
MERLIN, I ......... 122
MEBLIN, II ......... 125
BACCHUS ......... 127
toss AND GAIN ........ 130
MEBOFS ......... 131
THE HOUSE ........ 132
SAADI ........ • . .. 133
HOLIDAYS ......... 139
PAINTING AND SCULPTUBE . . . . . .140
FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ . . . . ,141
QHASBLLE ......... 147
XENOPHANES . . . . . . . .149
THE DAY'S RATION ....... 150
BLIGHT ......... 152
MUSKETAQUID . . . . . . . .155
DIRGE .......... 158
PHRENODY ......... 160
MENT
MAY-DAY ......... 171
THE ADIRONDACS ....... 193
OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES:
HBRAHMA
NEMESIS" . . ™ 7---;—-—;-'- .206
FATE 207
FREEDOM 208
ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857 209
BOSTON HYMN 211
VOLUNTARIES 215
LOVB AND THOUGHT 220
[COVER'S PETITION 221
UNA 222
LETTERS . 223
RUBIES 224
MERLIN'S SONO . 225
£HE TEST 226
SOLUTION 227
UUJNTEJNTi
B vii
FAOB
NATURE ANIJ> ^IFE :
. 230
NATURE, II .
. 231
DAYS ^<^L^~~~~. . .„
/2&J
THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT .
. 235
MY GARDEN ....
. 236
THE TITMOUSE
. 239
SEA-SHORE ....
. 243
.SowQ OF NATURE .
. 245
Two RIVERS ....
. 249
WALDEINSAMKEJJ^-T" - .
TERMINUS Vr .
. 250
THE PAST ;
. 254
THE LAST FAREWELL
. 255
IN MEMORIAM
. 257
ELEMENTS :
. 261
COMPENSATION
. 262
POLITICS ....
. 264
HEROISM ....
. 265
CHARACTER ....
. 266
CULTURE ....
. 267
FRIENDSHIP ....
. 268
BEAUTY ....
. 269
MANNERS ....
. 270
ART
. 271
SPIRITUAL LAWS .
. 272
UNITY
. 273
WORSHIP ....
. 274
QUATRAINS
. 275
TRANSLATIONS ....
. 283
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:
HXMU . ,
. \292
GRACE .....
. 294
THE THREE DIMENSIONS
. 295
. 295
WEALTH . . *
. 296
• , . 298
BOSTON ....
. 300
MOTTOES TO THE "ESSAYS':
HISTOBY ....
. 305
PRUDENCE ....
• • • • 306
viii CONTENTS
PAQB
GIFTS 306
PIBOLES 307
INTELLECT 307
£HB POET 308
UATUBB 309
.NOMINALIST AND REALIST 310
INDEX OF TITLES 311
INDEX 02- FIRST LINES 313
POEMS
(1865)
THE SPHINX
THE Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled ;
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
' Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept ? —
I waited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept ; —
' The fate of the man-child ;
The meaning of man ; 10
Known fruit of the unknown ;
Daedalian plan ;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep ;
Life death overtaking ;
Deep underneath deep ?
' Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm ;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm ; 20
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings :
Kind leaves of his covert,
Your silence he sings.
EMERSON B
THE SPHINX
' The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet ;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes, 3°
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.
' Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred, —
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still ;
Night veileth the morning,
The vapour the hill. 40
' The babe by its mother
Lies bath&d in joy ;
Glide its hours uncounted, —
The sun is its toy ;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes ;
And the sun of the world
In soft miniature lies.
'But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals ; 50
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals ;
THE SPHINX 3
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
1 Out spoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear ; —
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere : — 60
" Who has drugged my boy's cup ?
Who has mixed my boy's bread ?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned the man-child's head ? " '
I heard a poet answer
Aloud and cheerfully,
* Say on, sweet Sphinx ! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me ;
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time ; 70
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
'The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best ;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain. 80
B2
4 THE SPHINX
' Profounder, profounder,
Man's spirit must dive ;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive ;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found, — for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
' Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores ; 9°
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free ? —
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
' Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flies ;
And under pain, pleasure, —
Under pleasure, pain lies. 100
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway ;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.
' Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits :
Thy sight is growing blear ;
Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx—
Her muddy eyes to clear ! ' —
THE SPHINX 5
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, —
Said, * Who taught thee me to name ? no
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
' Thou art the unanswered question ;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh ;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply ;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity ;
Time is the false reply.' 120
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone ;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon ;
She spired into a yellow flame ;
She flowered in blossoms red ;
She flowed into a foaming wave ;
She stood Monadnoc's head.
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame : 130
'Who telleth one of my meanings,
Is master of all I am.'
EACH AND ALL
LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee from the hill-top looking down ;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height ;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent. 10
All are needed by each one ;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough ;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even ;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky ; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore ;
The bubbles of the latest wave ao
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave ;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home ;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
EACH AND ALL 7
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, 30
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ; —
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, ' I covet truth ;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat ;
I leave it behind with the games of youth.' —
As I spoke, beneath my feet 40
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs ;
I inhaled the violet's breath ;
Around me stood the oaks and firs ;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity ;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird ; —
Beauty through my senses stole ; 5°
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
THE PROBLEM
I LIKE a church ; I like a cowl ;
I love a prophet of the soul ;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles ;
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure ?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought ; 10
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle ;
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old ;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below, —
The canticles of love and woe ;
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Home, 20
Wrought in a sad sincerity ;
Himself from God ho could not free ;
He builded better than he knew ; —
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast ?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell ?
THE PROBLEM 9
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads ? 30
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. ^/
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone ;
And Morning opes with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids ;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye ;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air ; 40
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass ;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned ;
And the same power that reared the shrine,
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 50
Ever the fiery Pentecost
Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken ;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
10 THE PROBLEM
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind. 60
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise, —
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear ; 70
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.
11
TO RHEA
THEE, dear friend, a brother soothes,
Not with flatteries, but truths,
Which tarnish not, but purify
To light which dims the morning's eye.
I have come from the spring-woods,
From the fragrant solitudes ; —
Listen what the poplar-tree
And murmuring waters counselled me.
If with love thy heart has burned ;
If thy love is unreturned ; 10
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed ;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light ;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye ; 20
Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold ;
Though thou kept the straightest road,
Yet thou errest far and broad.
But thou shalt do as do the gods
In their cloudless periods ;
12 TO RHEA
For of this lore be thou sure, —
Though thou forget, the gods, secure,.
Forget never their command,
But make the statute of this land. 3°
As they lead, so follow all,
Ever have done, ever shall.
Warning to the blind and deaf,
'Tis written on the iron leaf,
Who drinks of Cupid's nectar cup
Loveth downward, and not up ;
Therefore, who loves, of gods or men,
Shall not by the same be loved again ;
His sweetheart's idolatry
Falls, in turn, a new degree. 40
When a god is once beguiled
By beauty of a mortal child,
And by her radiant youth delighted,
He is not fooled, but warily knoweth
His love shall never be requited.
And thus the wise Immortal doeth. —
'Tis his study and delight
To bless that creature day and night ;
From all evils to defend her ;
In her lap to pour all splendour ; 50
To ransack earth for riches rare,
And fetch her stars to deck her hair :
He mixes music with her thoughts,
And saddens her with heavenly doubts :
All grace, all good his great heart knows,
Profuse in love, the king bestows :
Saying, ' Hearken ! Earth, Sea, Air !
This monument of my despair
TO RHEA 13
Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair.
Not for a private good, 60
But I, from my beatitude,
Albeit scorned as none was scorned,
Adorn her as was none adorned.
I make this maiden an ensample
To Nature, through her kingdoms ample,
Whereby to model newer races,
Statelier forms, and fairer faces ;
To carry man to new degrees
Of power, and of comeliness.
These presents be the hostages 70
Which I pawn for my release.
See to thyself, 0 Universe !
Thou art better, and not worse.' —
And the god, having given all,
Is freed forever from his thrall.
14
THE VISIT
ASKEST, ' How long thou shalt stay ? '
Devastator of the day !
Know, each substance, and relation,
Thorough nature's operation,
Hath its unit, bound, and metre ;
And every new compound
Is some product and repeater, —
Product of the earlier found.
But the unit of the visit,
The encounter of the wise, — 10
Say, what other metre is it
Than the meeting of the eyes ?
Nature poureth into nature
Through the channels of that feature.
Riding on the ray of sight,
Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,
Or for service, or delight,
Hearts to hearts their meaning show,
Sum their long experience,
And import intelligence. 20
Single look has drained the breast ;
Single moment years confessed.
The duration of a glance
Is the term of convenance,
And, though thy rede be church or state,
Frugal multiples of that.
THE VISIT 15
Speeding Saturn cannot halt ;
Linger, — thou shalt rue the fault ;
If Love his moment overstay,
Hatred's swift repulsions play. 3°
16
URIEL
IT fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
SAID overheard the young gods talking ;
And the treason, too long pent.
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
' Line in nature is not found ;
Unit and universe are round ;
In vain produced, all rays return ;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.'
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,
A shudder ran around the sky ;
The stern old war-gods shook their heads ;
The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds ;
URIEL 17
Seemed to the holy festival
The rash word boded ill to all ; 30
The balance-beam of Fate was bent ;
The bounds of good and ill were rent ;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion.
A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell
On the beauty of Uriel ;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud ;
Whether doomed to long gyration
In the sea of generation, 40
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the norve of feebler sight.
Straightway, a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels' veiling wings ;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force, 50
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,
And the gods shook, they knew not why.
EMERSON
18
THE WORLD-SOUL
THANKS to the morning light,
Thanks to the foaming sea,
To the uplands of New-Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free ;
Thanks to each man of courage,
To the maids of holy mind ;
To the boy with his games undaunted,
Who never looks behind.
Cities of proud hotels,
Houses of rich and great,
Vice nestles in your chambers,
Beneath your roofs of slate.
It cannot conquer folly,
Time-and-space-conquering steam,
And the light-outspeeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam.
The politics are base ;
The letters do not cheer ;
And 'tis far in the deeps of history,
The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn ;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.
Yet there in the parlour sits
Some figure of noble guise, —
Our angel, in a stranger's form,
Or woman's pleading eyes ;
THE WORLD-SOUL 19
Or only a flashing sunbeam
In at the window-pane ; 30
Or Music pours on mortals
Its beautiful disdain.
The inevitable morning
Finds them who in cellars be ;
And be sure the all-loving Nature
Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape,
Yon sky between the walls,
Hold all the hidden wonders,
In scanty intervals. 40
Alas ! the Sprite that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire ;
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cipher
That 's writ upon our cell ;
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell.
If but one hero knew it,
The world would blush in flame ; 50
The sage, till he hit the secret,
Would hang his head for shame.
But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key ;
And henceforth we are comforted, —
We are but such as they.
02
20 THE WORLD-SOUL
Still, still the secret presses ;
The nearing clouds draw down ;
The crimson morning flames into
The fopperies of the town. 60
Within, without the idle earth,
Stars weave eternal rings ;
The sun himself shines heartily,
And shares the joy he brings.
And what if Trade sow cities
Like shells along the shore,
And thatch with towns the prairie broad,
With railways ironed o'er ? —
They are but sailing foam-bells
Along Thought's causing stream, 70
And take their shape and sun-colour
From him that sends the dream.
For Destiny does not like
To yield to men the helm ;
And shoots his thought, by hidden nerves,
Throughout the solid realm.
The patient Daemon sits,
With roses and a shroud ;
He has his way, and deals his gifts, —
But ours is not allowed. 80
He is no churl nor trifler,
And his viceroy is none, —
Love-without-weakness, —
Of Genius sire and son.
THE WOELD-SOUL 21
And his will is not thwarted ;
The seeds of land and sea
Are the atoms of his body bright,
And his behest obey.
He serveth the servant,
The brave he loves amain ; 9°
He kills the cripple and the sick,
And straight begins again.
For gods delight in gods,
And thrust the weak aside ;
To him who scorns their charities,
Their arms fly open wide.
When the old world is sterile,
And the ages are effete,
He will from wrecks and sediment
The fairer world complete. 100
He forbids to despair ;
His cheeks mantle with mirth ;
And the unimagined good of men
Is yeaning at the birth.
Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told ;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,
I see the summer glow, »o
And, through the wild-piled snowdrift,
The warm rosebuds below.
22
ALPHONSO OF CASTILE
I, ALPHONSO, live and learn,
Seeing Nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind ;
Lemons run to leaves and rind ;
Meagre crop of figs and limes ;
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.
Imps, at high midsummer, blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot : 10
'T will not now avail to tan
Orange cheek or skin of man.
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blood ; —
They discredit Adamhood.
Eyes of gods ! ye must have seen,
O'er your ramparts as ye lean, 20
The general debility ;
Of genius the sterility ;
Mighty projects countermanded ;
Rash ambition, brokenhanded ;
Puny man and scentless rose
Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
ALPHONSO OF CASTILE 23
Rebuild or ruin : either fill
Of vital force the wasted rill,
Or tumble all again in heap
To weltering chaos and to sleep. 30
Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats,
Which drove them erst to social feats ;
Now, to a savage self ness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one ;
With science poorly mask their hurt,
And vex the gods with question pert,
Immensely curious whether you
Still are rulers, or mildew ? 40
Masters, I'm in pain with you ;
Masters, I'll be plain with you ;
In my palace of Castile,
I, a king, for kings can feel.
There my thoughts the matter roll,
And solve and oft resolve the whole.
And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise,
Ye shall not fail for sound advice.
Before ye want a drop of rain,
Hear the sentiment of Spain. 50
You have tried famine : no more try it ;
Ply us now with a full diet ;
Teach your pupils now with plenty ;
For one sun supply us twenty.
I have thought it thoroughly over,—
State of hermit, state of lover ;
24 ALPHONSO OF CASTILE
We must have society,
We cannot spare variety.
Hear you, then, celestial fellows !
Fits not to be over-zealous ; 60
Steads not to work on the clean jump,
Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump.
Men and gods are too extense ;
Could you slacken and condense ?
Your rank overgrowths reduce
Till your kinds abound with juice ?
Earth, crowded, cries, ' Too many men ! *
My counsel is, kill nine in ten,
And bestow the shares of all
On the remnant decimal. 70
Add their nine lives to this cat ;
Stuff their nine brains in his hat ;
Make his frame and forces square
With the labours he must dare ;
Thatch his flesh, and even his years
With the marble which he rears.
There, growing slowly old at ease,
No faster than his planted trees,
He may, by warrant of his age,
In schemes of broader scope engage. 80
So shall ye have a man of the sphere,
Fit to grace the solar year
26
MITHRIDATES
I CANNOT spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose ;
From the earth-poles to the line,
All between that works or grows,
Everything is kin of mine.
Give me agates for my meat ;
Give me cantharids to eat ;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes ; —
From all natures, sharp and slimy, 10
Salt and basalt, wild and tame :
Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
Bird, and reptile, be my game.
Ivy for my fillet band ;
Blinding dog-wood in my hand ;
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
And the prussic juice to lull me :
Swing me in the upas boughs,
Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.
Too long shut in strait and few, 20
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humours shift it,
As you spin a cherry.
0 doleful ghosts, and goblins merry !
26 MITHRIDATES
0 all you virtues, methods, mights,
Means, appliances, delights,
Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,
Smug routine, and things allowed,
Minorities, things under cloud ! 3°
Hither ! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me !
God ! I will not be an owl,
But sun me in the Capitol.
27
TO J.W.
SET not thy foot on graves ;
Hear what wine and roses say ;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.
Set not thy foot on graves ;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable Time
And Nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.
Set not thy foot on graves : 10
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament,
His myrrh, and wine, and rings,
His sheet of lead,
And trophies buried :
Go, get them where he earned them when alive;
As resolutely dig or dive.
Life is too short to wasto
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand : 20
'T will soon be dark ;
Up ! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark !
28
FATE
THAT you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous ;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
There 's a melody born of melody,
Which melts the world into a sea.
Toil could never compass it ;
Art its height could never hit ;
It came never out of wit ;
But a music music-born 10
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty, if it lack the fire
Which drives mo mad with sweet desire,
What boots it ? what the soldier's mail,
Unless he conquer and prevail ?
What all the goods thy pride which lift,
If thou pine for another's gift ?
Alas ! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight :
When thou lookest on his face, 20
Thy heart saith, ' Brother, go thy ways !
None shall ask theo what thou doest,
Or care a rush for what thou knowest,
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden ; '
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten.
FATE 29
Surely he carries a talisman
Under his tongue ; 30
Broad his shoulders are and strong ;
And his eye is scornful,
Threatening, and young.
I hold it of little matter
Whether your jewel be of pure water,
A rose diamond or a white,
But whether it dazzle me with light.
I care not how you are dressed,
In coarsest weeds or in the best ;
Nor whether your name is base or brave ; 40
Nor for the fashion of your behaviour ;
But whether you charm me,
Bid my bread feed and my fire warm me,
And dress up Nature in your favour.
One thing is forever good ;
That one thing is Success, —
Dear to the Eumenides,
And to all the heavenly brood.
Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,
Carries the eagles, and masters the sword. 50
30
GUY
MORTAL mixed of middle clay,
Attempered to the night and day,
Interchangeable with things,
Needs no amulets nor rings.
Guy possessed the talisman
That all things from him began ;
And as, of old, Polycrates
Chained the sunshine and the breeze,
So did Guy betimes discover
Fortune was his guard and lover ;
In strange junctures, felt, with awe,
His own symmetry with law ;
That no mixture could withstand
The virtue of his lucky hand.
He gold or jewel could not lose,
Nor not receive his ample dues.
In the street, if he turned round,
His eye the eye 'twas seeking found.
It seemed his Genius discreet
Worked on the Maker's own receipt,
And made each tide and element
Stewards of stipend and of rent ;
So that the common waters fell
As costly wine into his well.
He had so sped his wise affairs
That he caught Nature in his snares :
Early or late, the falling rain
Arrived in time to swell his grain ;
GUY 31
Stream could not so perversely wind
But corn of Guy's was there to grind ; 3°
The siroc found it on its way,
To speed his sails, to dry his hay ;
And the world's sun seemed to rise,
To drudge all day for Guy the wise.
In his rich nurseries, timely skill
Strong crab with nobler blood did fill ;
The zephyr in his garden rolled
From plum-trees vegetable gold ;
And all the hours of the year
With their own harvest honoured were. 4*>
There was no frost but welcome came,
Nor freshet, nor midsummer flame.
Belonged to wind and world the toil
And venture, and to Guy the oil.
32
TACT
WHAT boots it, thy virtue,
What profit thy parts,
While one thing thou lackest, —
The art of all arts ?
The only credentials,
Passport to success ;
Opens castle and parlour, —
Address, man, Address.
The maiden in danger
Was saved by the swain ; 10
His stout arm restored her
To Broadway again.
The maid would reward him, —
Gay company come, —
They laugh, she laughs with them ;
He is moonstruck and dumb.
This clinches the bargain ;
Sails out of the bay ;
Gets the vote in the senate,
Spite of Webster and Clay. 20
Has for genius no mercy,
For speeches no heed ;
It lurks in the eyebeam,
It leaps to its deed.
Church, market, and tavern,
Bed and board, it will sway.
It has no to-morrow ;
It ends with to-day.
GOOD-BYE 37
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet ? 30
38
THE RHODORA :
ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER ?
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay ;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 10
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being :
Why thou wert there, 0 rival of the rose !
I never thought to ask, I never knew ;
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self -same Power that brought me there brought
you. 16
39
THE HUMBLE-BEE
BURLY, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let .them sail for Porto Eique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek ;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone !
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines ;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines. 10
Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion 1
Sailor of the atmosphere ;
Swimmer through the waves of air ;
Voyager of light and noon ;
Epicurean of June ;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum, —
All without is martyrdom.
When the south wind, in May days, 20
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And, with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a colour of romance,
And, infusing subtle heats,
Turns the sod to violets,
40 THE HUMBLE-BEE
Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost displace 3°
With thy mellow, breezy bass.
Hot midsummer's petted crone,
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
Tells of countless sunny hours,
Long days, and solid banks of flowers ;
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found ;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.
Aught unsavoury or unclean 40
Hath my insect never seen ;
But violets and bilberry bells,
Maple-sap, and daffodels,
Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn of honey,
Scented fern, and agrimony,
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue,
And brier-roses, dwelt among ;
All beside was unknown waste, 50
All was picture as he passed.
Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher !
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
THE HUMBLE-BEE 41
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep ; 60
Woe and want thou canst outsleep ;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.
BERRYING
* MAY be true what I had heard, —
Earth's a howling wilderness,
Truculent with fraud and force,'
Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the river-side.
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,
Pleasant fancies overtook me.
I said, ' What influence me preferred,
Elect, to dreams thus beautiful ? ' 10
The vines replied, ' And didst thou deem
No wisdom from our berries went ? *
THE SNOW-STORM
ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight : the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry. 10
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths ;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 20
Maugre the farmer's sighs ; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
44
WOODNOTES— I
1
FOE this present, hard
Is the fortune of the bard,
Born out of time ;
All his accomplishment,
From Nature's utmost treasure spent,
Booteth not him.
When the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
He speeds to the woodland walks,
To birds and trees he talks : 10
Caesar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.
He goes to the river-side, —
Not hook nor line hath he ;
He stands in the meadows wide, —
Nor gun nor scythe to see ;
With none has he to do,
And none seek him,
Nor men below,
Nor spirits dim. 20
Sure some god his eye enchants :
What he knows nobody wants.
In the wood he travels glad,
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad.
Planter of celestial plants,
What he knows nobody wants ;
What he knows he hides, not vaunts.
WOODNOTES 45
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest : 30
Pondering shadows, colours, clouds,
Grass-buds, and caterpillar-shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet's petal,
Why Nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats :
Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself, —
Who can tell him what he is ? 40
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities ?
2
And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A lover true, who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart ;
It seemed that Nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place, 50
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox,
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.
46 WOODNOTES
It seemed as if the breezes brought him ;
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him ; 60
As if by secret sight he knew
Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.
Many haps fall in the field
Seldom seen by wishful eyes,
But all her shows did Nature yield,
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods ;
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ;
He found the tawny thrush's broods ;
And the shy hawk did wait for him ; 70
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come.
In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang,
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang ;
Ho trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone ;
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 80
He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads,
And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern
bowers.
He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,
With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, —
WOODNOTES 47
One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.
Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element ; 90
Whose living towers the years conspired to build,
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.
Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night ;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
So long he roved at will the boundless shade.
The timid it concerns to ask their way ;
And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,
To make no step until the event is known, ior
And ills to come as evils past bemoan.
Not so the wise ; no coward watch he keeps
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps ;
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome ;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there Js his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed,
4
'Twas one of the charmed days,
When the genius of God doth flow, no
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow ;
It may blow north, it still is warm ;
Or south, it still is clear ;
Or east, it smells like a clover farm ;
Or west, no thunder fear.
48 WOODNOTES
The musing peasant lowly great
Beside the forest water sate ;
The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown
Composed the network of his throne ; 120
The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,
Was burnished to a floor of glass,
Painted with shadows green and proud,
Of the tree and of the cloud.
He was the heart of all the scene ;
On him the sun looked more serene ;
To hill and cloud his face was known, —
It seemed the likeness of their own ;
They knew by secret sympathy
The public child of earth and sky. 13°
* You ask/ he said, * what guide
Me through trackless thickets led,
Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide ?
I found the water's bed.
The watercourses were my guide ;
I travelled grateful by their side,
Or through their channel dry ;
They led me through the thicket damp,
Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp,
Through beds of granite cut my road, 140
And their resistless friendship showed ;
The falling waters led me,
The foodful waters fed me,
And brought me to the lowest land,
Unerring to the ocean sand.
The moss upon the forest bark
Was pole-star when the night was dark,
The purple berries in the wood
WOODNOTES 49
Supplied me necessary food ;
For Nature ever faithful is 150
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
'Twill be time enough to die ;
Then will yet my mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field,
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover/ 159
fiMBBSON
60
WOODNOTES-II
As sunbeams stream through liberal space,
And nothing jostle or displace,
So waved the pine-tree through my thought,
And fanned the dreams it never brought.
1 WHETHER is better the gift or the donor ?
Come to me,'
Quoth the pine-tree,
' I am the giver of honour.
My garden is the cloven rock,
And my manure the snow ; 10
And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,
In summer's scorching glow.
Ancient or curious,
Who knoweth aught of us ?
Old as Jove,
Old as Love,
Who of me
Tells the pedigree ?
Only the mountains old.
Only the waters cold, 20
Only moon and star
My coevals are.
Ere the first fowl sung
My relenting boughs among
Ere Adam wived,
Ere Adam lived,
WOODNOTES 51
Ere the duck dived,
Ere the bees hived,
Ere the lion roared,
Ere the eagle soared, 30
Light and heat, land and sea,
Spake unto the oldest tree.
Glad in the sweet and secret aid
Which matter unto matter paid,
The water flowed, the breezes fanned,
The tree confined the roving sand,
The sunbeam gave me to the sight,
The tree adorned the formless light,
And once again
O'er the grave of men 40
We shall talk to each other again
Of the old age behind,
Of the time out of mind,
Which shall come again.
' Whether is better the gift or the donor ?
Come to me/
Quoth the pine-tree,
' I am the giver of honour.
He is great who can live by me.
The rough and bearded forester 50
Is better than the lord ;
God fills the scrip and canister,
Sin piles the loaded board.
The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant the lord that shall be ;
The lord is hay, the peasant grass,
One dry, and one the living tree.
E 2
52 WOODNOTES
Genius with my boughs shall flourish,
Want and oold our roots shall nourish.
Who liveth by the ragged pine 60
Foundeth a heroic line ;
Who liveth in the palace hall
Waneth fast and spendeth all.
He goes to my savage haunts,
With his chariot and his care ;
My twilight realm he disenchants.
And finds his prison there.
' What prizes the town and the tower ?
Only what the pine-tree yields ;
Sinew that subdued the fields ; 70
The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods
Chants his hymn to hills and floods,
Whom the city's poisoning spleen
Made not pale, or fat, or lean ;
Whom the rain and the wind purgeth,
Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth,
In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth,
In whose feet the lion rusheth,
Iron arms, and iron mould,
That know not fear, fatigue, or cold. 80
I give my rafters to his boat,
My billets to his boiler's throat ;
And I will swim the ancient sea,
To float my child to victory,
And grant to dwellers with the pine
Dominion o'er the palm and vine.
Westward I ope the forest gates,
The train along the railroad skates ;
WOODNOTES 53
It leaves the land behind like ages past,
The foreland flows to it in river fast ; 90
Missouri I have made a mart,
I teach Iowa Saxon art.
Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
Cut a bough from my parent stem,
And dip it in thy porcelain vase ;
A little while each russet gem
Will swell and rise with wonted grace ;
But when it seeks enlarged supplies,
The orphan of the forest dies. 100
Whoso walketh in solitude,
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass,
From these companions, power and grace.
Clean shall he be, without, within,
From the old adhering sin.
Love shall he, but not adulate
The all-fair, the all-embracing Fate; no
All ill dissolving in the light
Of his triumphant piercing sight.
Not vain, sour, nor frivolous ;
Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous ;
Grave, chaste, contented, though retired,
And of all other men desired.
On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down ;
All constellations of the sky
Shed their virtue through his eye. 120
64 WOODNOTES
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocence ;
The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,
All spheres, all stones, his helpers be ;
He shall never be old ;
Nor his fate shall be foretold ;
He shall see the speeding year,
Without wailing, without fear ;
He shall be happy in his love,
Like to like shall joyful prove ; 13°
He shall be happy whilst he woos,
Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.
But if with gold she bind her hair,
And deck her breast with diamond,
Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,
Though thou lie alone on the ground.
The robe of silk in which she shines,
It was woven of many sins ;
And the shreds
Which she sheds 140
In the wearing of the same,
Shall be grief on grief,
And shame on shame.
* Heed the old oracles,
Ponder my spells ;
Song wakes in my pinnacles
When the wind swells.
Soundeth the prophetic wind,
The shadows shake on the rock behind,
And the countless leaves of the pine are strings
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. 151
WOODNOTES 65
* Hearken ! Hearken !
If thou wouldst know the mystic song
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the paean swells ;
0 wise man ! hear'st thou half it tells ?
0 wise man ! hearjst thou the least part ?
Tis the chronicle of art,
To the open ear it sings
Sweet the genesis of things, 160
Of tendency through endless ages,
Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,
Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
Of the old flood's subsiding slime,
Of chemic matter, force, and form,
Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm :
The rushing metamorphosis,
Dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream. 170
0, listen to the undersong —
The ever old, the ever young ;
And, far within those cadent pauses,
The chorus of the ancient Causes !
Delights the dreadful Destiny
To fling his voice into the tree,
And shock thy weak ear with a note
Breathed from the everlasting throat.
In music he repeats the pang
Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang. 180
0 mortal ! thy ears are stones ;
These echoes are laden with tones
Which only the pure can hear ;
56 WOODNOTES
Thou canst not catch what they recite
Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,
Of man to come, of human life,
Of Death, and Fortune, Growth, and Strife.'
Once again the pine-tree sung : —
' Speak not thy speech my boughs among ;
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze ; 190
My hours are peaceful centuries.
Talk no more with feeble tongue ;
No more the fool of space and time,
Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.
Only thy Americans
Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,
But the runes that I rehearse
Understands the universe ;
The least breath my boughs which tossed
Brings again the Pentecost ; 200
To every soul it soundeth clear
In a voice of solemn cheer, —
" Am I not thine ? Are not these thine ? "
And they reply, " Forever mine ! "
My branches speak Italian,
English, German, Basque, Castilian,
Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,
To Fin, and Lap, and swart Malay,
To each his bosom-secret say. aio
Come learn with me the fatal song
Which knits the world in music strong,
Whereto every bosom dances,
Kindled with courageous fancies.
WOODNOTES 57
Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,
Of things with things, of times with times,
Primal chimes of sun and shade,
Of sound and echo, man and maid,
The land reflected in the flood,
Body with shadow still pursued. 220
For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
The wood is wiser far than thou ;
The wood and wave each other know, 230
Not unrelated, unaffied,
But to each thought and thing allied,
Is perfect Nature's every part,
Rooted in the mighty Heart.
But thou, poor child ! unbound, unrhymed,
Whence earnest thou, misplaced, mistimed ?
Whence, 0 thou orphan and defrauded ?
Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ?
Who thee divorced, deceived, and left ?
Thee of thy faith who hath bereft, 240
And torn the ensigns from thy brow,
And sunk the immortal eye so low ?
Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,
Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender
For royal man ; — they thee confess
An exile from the wilderness, —
58 WOODNOTES
The hills where health with health agrees,
And the wise soul expels disease.
Hark ! in thy ear I will tell the sign
By which thy hurt thou may'st divine. 250
When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff,
Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,
To thee the horizon shall express
Only emptiness and emptiness ;
There lives no man of Nature's worth
In the circle of the earth ;
And to thine eye the vast skies fall,
Dire and satirical,
On clucking hens, and prating fools,
On thieves, on drudges, and on dolls. 260
And thou shalt say to the Most High,
" Godhead ! all this astronomy,
And fate, and practice, and invention,
Strong art, and beautiful pretension,
This radiant pomp of sun and star,
Throes that were, and worlds that are,
Behold ! were in vain and in vain ; —
It cannot be, — I will look again ;
Surely now will the curtain rise,
And earth's fit tenant me surprise ; — 270
But the curtain doth not rise,
And Nature has miscarried wholly
Into failure, into folly/'
' Alas ! thine is the bankruptcy,
Blessed Nature so to see.
Come, lay thee in my soothing shade,
And heal the hurts which sin has made.
WOODNOTES 59
I will teach the bright parable
Older than time,
Things undeclarable, 280
Visions sublime.
I see thee in the crowd alone ;
I will be thy companion.
Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,
And build to them a final tomb ;
Let the starred shade that nightly falls
Still celebrate their funerals,
And the bell of beetle and of bee
Knell their melodious memory.
Behind thee leave thy merchandise, 290
Thy churches, and thy charities ;
And leave thy peacock wit behind ;
Enough for thee the primal mind
That flows in streams, that breathes in wind.
Leave all thy pedant lore apart ;
God hid the whole world in thy heart.
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,
And gives them all who all renounce.
The rain comes when the wind calls ;
The river knows the way to the sea ; 300
Without a pilot it runs and falls,
Blessing all lands with its charity ;
The sea tosses and foams to find
Its way up to the cloud and wind ;
The shadow sits close to the flying ball ;
The date fails not on the palm-tree tall ;
And thou, — go burn thy wormy pages, —
Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.
Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain
60 WOODNOTES
To find what bird had piped the strain ; — 3l°
Seek not, and the little eremite
Flies gaily forth and sings in sight.
* Hearken once more !
I will tell thee the mundane loro.
Older am I than thy numbers wot ;
Change I may, but I pass not.
Hitherto all things fast abide,
And anchored in the tempest ride.
Trenchant time behooves to hurry
All to yean and all to bury : 320
All the forms are fugitive,
But the substances survive.
Ever fresh the broad creation,
A divine improvisation,
From the heart of God proceeds,
A single will, a million deeds.
Once slept the world an egg of stone,
And pulse, and sound, and light was none ;
And God said, " Throb ! " and there was motion,
And the vast mass became vast ocean. 33°
Onward and on, the eternal Pan,
Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
Halteth never in one shape,
But forever doth escape,
Like wave or flame, into new forms
Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms.
I, that to-day am a pine,
Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
He is free and libertine,
Pouring of his power the wine 340
WOODNOTES 61
To every age, to every race ;
Unto every race and age
He emptieth the beverage ;
Unto each, and unto all,
Maker and original.
The world is the ring of his spells,
And the play of his miracles,
As he giveth to all to drink,
Thus or thus they are and think.
He giveth little or giveth much, 35°
To make them several or such.
With one drop sheds form and feature ;
With the next a special nature ;
The third adds heat's indulgent spark ;
The fourth gives light which eats the dark ;
Into the fifth himself he flings,
And conscious Law is King of kings.
Pleaseth him, the Eternal Child,
To play his sweet will, glad and wild ;
As the bee through the garden ranges, 360
From world to world the godhead changes ;
As the sheep go feeding in the waste,
From form to form he maketh haste ;
This vault which glows immense with light
Is the inn where he lodges for a night.
What recks such Traveller if the bowers
Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers
A bunch of fragrant lilies be,
Or the stars of eternity ?
Alike to him the better, the worse, — 37°
The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
Thou metest him by Centuries,
62 WOODNOTES
And lo ! he passes like the breeze ;
Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency ;
Thou askest in fountains and in fires,
He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star ;
He is the sparkle of the spar ;
He is the heart of every creature ; 380
He is the meaning of each feature ;
And his mind is the sky,
Than all it holds more deep, more high.'
63
MONADNOO
THOUSAND minstrels woke within me,
' Our music 's in the hills ; ' —
Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-coloured rills.
* Up ! — If thou knew'st who calls
To twilight parks of beech and pine,
High over the river intervals,
Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls !
Up ! where the airy citadel 10
O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell !
Let not unto the stones the Day
Her lily and rose, her sea and land display.
Bead the celestial sign !
Ix> ! the south answers to the north ;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane ;
A greater spirit bids thee forth
Than the grey dreams which thee detain.
Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades ! 20
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrives the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Take the bounty of thy birth,
Taste the lordship of the earth.'
64 MONADNOC
I heard, and I obeyed, —
Assured that ho who made the claim,
Well known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid. 30
Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed,
Like ample banner flung abroad
To all the dwellers in the plains
Round about, a hundred miles,
With salutation to the sea, and to the bordering isles,
In his own loom's garment dressed,
By his proper bounty blessed,
Fast abides this constant giver, 4°
Pouring many a cheerful river ;
To far eyes, an aerial isle
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint ;
The people's pride, the country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore ;
Pillar which God aloft had set
So that men might it not forget ;
It should be their life's ornament, 5°
And mix itself with each event ;
Gauge and calendar and dial,
Weatherglass and chemic phial,
Garden of berries, perch of birds,
Pasture of pool-haunting herds,
MONADNOC 65
Graced by each change of sum untold,
Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.
The Titan heeds his sky-affairs,
Eich rents and wide alliance shares ;
Mysteries of colour daily laid 60
By the sun in light and shade ;
And sweet varieties of chance,
And the mystic seasons' dance ;
And thief-like step of liberal hours
Thawing snow-drift into flowers.
0, wondrous craft of plant and stone
By eldest science done and shown !
* Happy/ I said, ' whose home is here !
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer !
Boon Nature to his poorest shed 70
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.'
Intent, I searched the region round,
And in low hut my monarch found : —
Woe is me for my hope's downfall !
Is yonder squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead ?
Time out of mind, this forge of ores ;
Quarry of spars in mountain pores ;
Old cradle, hunting-ground, and bier 80
Of wolf and otter, bear and deer ;
Well-built abode of many a race ;
Tower of observance searching space ;
Factory of river and of rain ;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain ;
EMERSON F
66 MONADNOC
By million changes skilled to tell t
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And -what obedient Nature can ; —
Is this colossal talisman
Kindly to creature, blood, and kind, 9°
Yet speechless to the master's mind ?
I thought to find the patriots
In whom the stock of freedom roots :
To myself I oft recount
Tales of many a famous mount, —
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells ;
Bards, Roys, Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here Nature shall condense her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,
And lifting man to the blue deep 100
Whore stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor, lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight :
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies,
Rear purer wits, inventive eyes, —
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see ;
And by the moral of his place no
Hint summits of heroic grace ;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind ;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
MONADNOC 67
But if the bravo old mould is broke,
And end #1 churls the mountain folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke, 120
Sink, 0 mountain, in the swamp !
Hide in thy skies, 0 sovereign lamp !
Perish like leaves, the highland breed !
No sire survive, no son succeed !
Soft ! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men ;
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need. 130
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant, slow as child,
Smoking in a squalid room
Where yet the westland breezes come.
Close hid in those rough guises lurk
Western magians, — here they work.
Sweat and season are their arts,
Their talismans are ploughs and carts ; 140
And well the youngest can command
Honey from the frozen land ;
With sweet hay the wild swamp adorn,
Change the running sand to corn ;
For wolves and foxes, lowing herds,
And for cold mosses, cream and curds ;
Weave wood to canisters and mats ;
Drain sweet maple juice in vats
F2
68 MONADNOC
No bird is safe that cuts the air
From their rifle or their snare ; 150
No fish, in river or in lake,
But their long hands it thence will take ;
And the country's flinty face,
Like wax, their fashioning skill betrays,
To fill the hollows, sink the hills,
Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,
And fit the bleak and howling place
For gardens of a finer race.
The World-soul knows his own affair,
Forelooking, when he would prepare 160
For the next ages, men of mould
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life-pulse strong but slow :
Bitter winds and fasts austere
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
Toil and tempest are the toys
And games to breathe his stalwart boys : 170
They bide their time, and well can prove,
If need were, their line from Jove ;
Of the same stuff, and so allayed,
As that whereof the sun is made,
And of the fibre, quick and strong,
Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.
Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
In dullness now their secret keep ;
MONADNOC 69
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach. 180
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords ;
But they turn them in a fashion
Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion.
I can spare the college bell,
And the learned lecture, well ;
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For that hardy English root
Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. 190
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground, and never soars,
While Jake retorts, and Reuben roars ;
Scoff of yeoman strong and stark,
Goes like bullet to its mark ;
While the solid curse and jeer
Never balk the waiting ear.
To student ears keen relished jokes
On truck, and stock, and farming folks, — 200
Naught the mountain yields thereof,
But savage health and sinews tough.
On the summit as I stood,
O'er the floor of plain and flood
Seemed to me, the towering hill
Was not altogether still,
But a quiet sense conveyed ;
If I err not, thus it said : —
' Many feet in summer seek,
Betimes, my far-appearing peak ; 210
70 MONADNOC
In the dreaded winter time,
None save dappling shadows climb,
Under clouds, my lonely head,
Old as the sun, old almost as the shade.
And comest thou
To see strange forests and new snow,
And tread uplifted land ?
And lea vest thou thy lowland race,
Here amid clouds to stand ?
And wouldst be my companion, 220
Where I gaze, and still shall gaze,
Through tempering nights and flashing days,
When forests fall and man is gone,
Over tribes and over times,
At the burning Lyre,
Nearing me,
With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years ?
* Ah ! welcome, if thou bring
My secret in thy brain ; 230
To mountain-top may Muse's wing
With good allowance strain.
Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,
And how the hills began,
The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.
'Tis the law of bush and stone,
Each can only take his own.
* Let him heed who can and will ; 240
Enchantment fixed me here
MONADNOC 71
To sand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.
* If thou trowest
How the chemic eddies play,
Pole to pole, and what they say ;
And that these grey crags
Not on crags are hung,
But beads are of a rosary
On prayer and music strung ; 250
And, credulous, through the granite seeming,
Seest the smile of Reason beaming ; —
Can thy style-discerning eye
The hidden-working Builder spy,
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,
With hammer soft as snow-flake's flight ; —
Knowest thou this ?
0 pilgrim, wandering not amiss !
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin. 260
* For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune ;
Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
Cannot forget the sun, the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune ;
None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound, 270
And, though a pyramid, will bound.
72 MONADNOC
* Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among ;
But well I know, no mountain can
Measure with a perfect man.
For it is on zodiacs writ,
Adamant is soft to wit :
And when the greater comes again
With my secret in his brain,
I shall pass, as glides my shadow 280
Daily over hill and meadow.
' Through all time, in light, in gloom,
Well I hear the approaching feet
On the flinty pathway beat
Of him that cometh, and shall come ;
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As doth this round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams ;
Whose timbers, as they silent float, 290
Alps and Caucasus uprear,
And the long Alleghanies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.
' Every morn I lift my head,
Gaze o'er New England underspread,
South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,
From Katskill east to the sea-bound.
Anchored fast for many an age,
I await the bard and sage, 300
Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,
Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.
MONADNOC 73
Comes that cheerful troubadour,
This mound shall throb his face before,
As when, with inward fires and pain,
It rose a bubble from the plain.
When he cometh, I shall shed,
From this wellspring in my head,
Fountain-drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth. 310
There 's fruit upon my barren soil
Costlier far than wino or oil.
There 's a berry blue and gold,—
Autumn-ripe, its juices hold
Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancour, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight.
I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat, 3?°
Bread to eat, and juice to drink ;
So the thoughts that he shall think
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.
He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the Dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South Cove and City Wharf. 33°
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath, —
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow ;
74 MONADNOC
Open the daunting map beneath, —
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand ;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city-tops a glimmering haze.
I plant his eyes on the sky -hoop bounding : 340
" See there the grim grey bounding
Of the bullet of the earth
Whereon ye sail,
Tumbling steep
In the uncontinented deep."
He looks on that, and he turns pale.
'T is even so ; this treacherous kite,
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,
Thoughtless of its anxious freight,
Plunges eyeless on forever ; 35°
And he, poor parasite,
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer, —
Who is the captain he knows not,
Port or pilot trows not, —
Risk or ruin he must share.
I scowl on him with my cloud,
With my north wind chill his blood ;
I lame him, clattering down the rocks ;
And to live he is in fear.
Then, at last, I let him down 360
Once more into his dapper town,
To chatter, frightened, to his clan,
And forget me if he can.'
As in the old poetic fame
The gods are blind and lame,
MONADNOC 75
And the simular despite
Betrays the more abounding might,
So call not waste that barren cone
Above the floral zone,
Where forests starve : 370
It is pure use ; —
What sheaves like those which here we glean and
bind
Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse ?
Ages are thy days,
Thou grand expresser of the present tense,
And type of permanence !
Firm ensign of the fatal Being,
Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief,
That will not bide the seeing !
Hither we bring 380
Our insect miseries to the rocks ;
And the whole flight, with pestering wing,
Vanish, and end their murmuring, —
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which who can tell what mason laid ?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Replacing frieze and architrave ; —
Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave;
Still is the haughty pile erect
Of the old building Intellect. 39°
Complement of human kind,
Having us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,
0 barren mound, thy plenties fill !
76 MONADNOC
We fool and prate ;
Thou art silent and sedate.
To myriad kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense ;
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. 400
Thou seest, 0 watchman tall,
Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable good
For which we all our lifetime grope,
In shifting form the formless mind,
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou, in our astronomy
An opaquer star,
Seen haply from afar, 410
Above the horizon's hoop,
A moment, by the railway troop,
As o'er some bolder height they speed, —
By circumspect ambition,
By errant gain,
By feasters and the frivolous,-
Recallest us,
And makest sane.
Mute orator ! well skilled to plead,
And send conviction without phrase, 420
Thou dost supply
The shortness of our days,
And promise, on thy Pounder's truth.
Long morrow to this mortal youth.
77
FABLE
THE mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel ;
And the former called the latter ' Little Prig '.
Bun replied,
* You are doubtless very big ;
But all sort** of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track ;
Talents differ ; all is well and wisely put ;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.'
78
ODE
INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING
THOUGH loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honeyed thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life ?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife !
Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer ?
I found by thee, 0 rushing Contoocook !
And in thy valleys, Agiochook !
The jackals of the negro-holder.
The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
ODE 79
With little men ; —
Small bat and wren
House in the oak : —
If earth-fire cleave
The upheaved land, and bury the folk, 30
The Southern crocodile would grieve.
Virtue palters ; Right is hence ;
Freedom praised, but hid ;
Funeral eloquence
Rattles the coffin-lid.
What boots thy zeal,
O glowing friend,
That would indignant rend
The Northland from the South ?
Wherefore ? to what good end ? 4°
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still ; —
Things are of the snake.
The horseman serves the horse,
The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat ;
'Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to weave, and corn to grind ;
Things are in the saddle, 50
And ride mankind.
There are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled, —
Law for man, and law for thing ;
80 ODE
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
Tis fit the forest fall,
The steep be graded,
The mountain tunnelled, 60
The sand shaded,
The orchard planted,
The glebe tilled,
The prairie granted,
The steamer built.
Let man serve law for man ;
Live for friendship, live for love,
For truth's and harmony's behoof ;
The state may follow how it can,
As Olympus follows Jove. 70
Yet do not I implore
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods,
Nor bid the unwilling senator
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.
Every one to his chosen work ; —
Foolish hands may mix and mar ;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Eound they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd ; —
The over -god 80
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples, —
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races,
Black by white faces, —
ODE 81
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion ;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.
The Cossack eats Poland, 90
Like stolen fruit ;
Her last noble is ruined,
Her last poet mute :
Straight, into double band
The victors divide ;
Half for freedom strike and stand ; —
The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.
EMERSON
82
ASTRAEA
EACH the herald is who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate ;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down,
In the country and the town,
With this tablet on their neck, —
* Judgement and a judge we seek/
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist's chair ;
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears ;
Louder than with speech they pray, —
' What am I ? companion, say/
And the friend not hesitates
To assign just place and mates ;
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better ;
Each to each a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared repeats,
ASTRAEA 83
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words ;
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm. 30
Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state ;
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge
To those who gaze from the sea's edge.
It is there for benefit ;
It is there for purging light ; 40
There for purifying storms ;
And its depths reflect all forms ;
It cannot parley with the mean, —
Pure by impure is not seen.
For there 's no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
Daily stoops to harbour there. 48
02
84
ETIENNE DE LA BO^CE
I SERVE you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow ;
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.
When the pilgrimage is done,
And we've the landscape overrun,
I am bitter, vacant, thwarted,
And your heart is unsupported.
Vainly valiant, you have missed
The manhood that should yours resist, — 10
Its complement ; but if I could,
In severe or cordial mood,
Lead you rightly to my altar,
Where the wisest Muses falter,
And worship that world-warming spark
Which dazzles me in midnight dark,
Equalizing small and large,
While the soul it doth surcharge,
That the poor is wealthy grown,
And the hermit never alone, — 20
The traveller and the road seem one
With the errand to be done, —
That were a man's and lover's part,
That were Freedom's whitest chart.
85
SUUM CUIQUE
THE rain has spoiled the farmer's day ;
Shall sorrow put my books away ?
Thereby are two days lost :
Nature shall mind her own affairs ;
I will attend my proper cares,
In rain, or sun, or frost.
COMPENSATION
WHY should I keep holiday
When other men have none ?
Why but because, when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone ?
And why, when mirth unseals all tongues,
Should mine alone be dumb ?
Ah ! late I spoke to silent throngs,
And now their hour is come.
87
FORBEARANCE
HAST thou named all the birds without a gun ?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk ?
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust ?
And loved so well a high behaviour,
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay ?
O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine !
88
THE PARK
THE prosperous and beautiful
To me seem not to wear
The yoke of conscience masterful,
Which galls me everywhere.
I cannot shake off the god ;
On my neck he makes his seat ;
I look at my face in the glass, —
My eyes his eyeballs meet.
Enchanters ! enchantresses !
Your gold makes you seem wise ;
The morning mist within your grounds
More proudly rolls, more softly lies.
Yet spake yon purple mountain,
Yet said yon ancient wood,
That Night or Day, that Love or Crime,
Leads all souls to the Good.
89
FORERUNNERS
LONG I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides ;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet ; 10
Flowers they strew, — I catch the scent ;
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace ;
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers
Who the road had surely kept ;
They saw not my fine revellers, —
These had crossed them while they slept. 20
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive,
As they went or they returned,
At the house where these sojourned.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
Though they are not overtaken ;
90 FORERUNNERS
In sleep their jubilant troop is near, —
I tuneful voices overhear ; 30
It may be in wood or waste, —
At unawares 'tis come and past.
Their near camp my spirit knows
By signs gracious as rainbows.
I thenceforward, and long after,
Listen for their harp-like laughter,
And carry in my heart, for days,
Peace that hallows rudest ways. 38
91
SUKSUM CORDA
SEEK not the spirit, if it hide
Inexorable to thy zeal :
Baby, do not whine and chide :
Art thou not also real ?
Why shouldst thou stoop to poor excuse ?
Turn on the accuser roundly ; say,
' Here am I, here will I remain
For ever to myself soothfast ;
Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure stay ! '
Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast, I
For only it can absolutely deal.
92
ODE TO BEAUTY
WHO gave thee, 0 Beauty,
The keys of this breast, —
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest ?
Say, when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old ?
Or what was the service
For which I was sold ?
When first my eyes saw thee,
I found me thy thrall, 10
By magical drawings,
Sweet tyrant of all !
I drank at thy fountain
False waters of thirst ;
Thou intimate stranger,
Thou latest and first !
Thy dangerous glances
Make women of men ;
New-born, we are melting
Into nature again. 20
Lavish, lavish promiser,
Nigh persuading gods to err !
Guest of million painted forms,
Which in turn thy glory warms !
The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc,
The swinging spider's silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wine,
ODE TO BEAUTY 93
The shining pebble of the pond,
Thou inscribes! with a bond, 3°
In thy momentary play,
Would bankrupt nature to repay.
Ah, what avails it
To hide or to shun
Whom the Infinite One
Hath granted his throne ?
The heaven high over
Is the deep's lover ;
The sun and sea,
Informed by thee, 40
Before me run,
And draw me on,
Yet fly me still,
As Fate refuses
To me the heart Fate for me chooses.
Is it that my opulent soul
Was mingled from the generous whole ;
Sea-valleys and the deep of skies
Furnished several supplies ;
And the sands whereof I'm made 50
Draw me to them, self-betrayed ?
I turn the proud portfolios
Which hold the grand designs
Of Salvator, of Guercino,
And Piranesi's lines.
I hear the lofty paeans
Of the masters of the shell,
Who heard the starry music
And recount the numbers well ;
94 ODE TO BEAUTY
Olympian bards who sung 60
Divine Ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
Oft, in streets or humblest places,
I detect far-wandered graces,
Which, from Eden wide astray,
In lowly homes have lost their way.
Thee gliding through the sea of form,
Like the lightning through the storm,
Somewhat not to be possessed, 7°
Somewhat not to be caressed,
No feet so fleet could ever find,
No perfect form could ever bind.
Thou eternal fugitive,
Hovering over al| tfyat live,
Quick and skilful to inspire
Sweet, extravagant desire,
Starry space and lily-bell
Filling with thy roseate smell,
Wilt not give the lips to taste 80
Of the nectar which thou hast.
All that 's good and great with thee
Works in close conspiracy ;
Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely
To report thy features only,
And the cold and purple morning
Itself with thoughts of thee adorning ;
The leafy dell, the city, mart,
Equal trophies of thine art ;
ODE TO BEAUTY 95
E'en the flowing azure air 9°
Thou hast touched for my despair ;
And, if I languish into dreams,
Again I meet the ardent beams.
Queen of things ! I dare not die
In Being's deeps past ear and eye ;
Lest there I find the same deceiver,
And be the sport of Fate forever 97
Dread Power, but dear ! if God thou be,
Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me I
96
GIVE ALL TO LOVE
GIVE all to love ;
Obey thy heart ;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse, —
Nothing refuse.
'T is a brave master ;
Let it have scope :
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope : 10
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent ;
But it is a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
It was not for the mean ;
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt, 20
Valour unbending ;
Such 'twill reward, —
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
GIVE ALL TO LOVE 97
Leave all for love ;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavour, —
Keep thee to-day, 30
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid ;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free ;
Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, 40
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive ;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive. 49
TO ELLEN
AT THE SOUTH
THE green grass is bowing,
The morning wind is in it ;
'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
Though it change every minute.
'T is a tune of the spring ;
Every year plays it over
To the robin on the wing,
And to the pausing lover.
O'er ten thousand, thousand acres,
Goes light the nimble zephyr ; 10
The Flowers — tiny sect of Shakers —
Worship him ever.
Hark to the winning sound !
They summon thee, dearest, —
Saying, * We have dressed for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.
1 0 hasten ; Jt is our time,
Ere yet the red Summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
Loved of bee, — the tawny hummer. ao
* 0 pride of thy race !
Sad, in sooth, it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,
We poor New England flowers.
TO ELLEN 99
* Fairest, choose the fairest members
Of our lithe society ;
June's glories and September's
Show our love and piety.
* Thou shalt command us all, —
April's cowslip, summer's clover, 30
To the gentian in the fall,
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.
' 0 come, then, quickly come !
We are budding, we are blowing ;
And the wind that we perfume
Sings a tune that 's worth the knowing.'
H2
100
TO EVA
0 FAIR and stately maid, whose eyes
Were kindled in the upper skies
At the same torch that lighted mino ;
For so I must interpret still
Thy sweet dominion o'er my will,
A sympathy divine.
Ah ! let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem at heart my own ;
Nor fear those watchful sentinels,
Who charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids,
With fire that draws while it repels.
101
THE AMULET
YOUR picture smiles as first it smiled ;
The ring you gave is still the same ;
Your letter tells, 0 changing child !
No tidings since it came.
Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you, —
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
Alas ! that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession ; 10
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.
102
THINE EYES STILL SHINED
THINE eyes still shined for me, though far
I lonely roved the land or sea :
As I behold yon evening star,
Which yet beholds not me.
This morn I climbed the misty hill,
And roamed the pastures through ;
How danced thy form before my path
Amidst the deep-eyed dew !
When the redbird spread his sable wing,
And showed his side of flame ;
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.
103
EROS
THE sense of the world is short, —
Long and various the report, —
To love and be beloved ;
Men and gods have not outlearned it ;
And, how oft soe'er they've turned it,
'Tis not to be improved.
104
HERMIONE
ON a mound an Arab lay,
And sung his sweet regrets,
And told his amulets :
The summer bird
His sorrow heard,
And, when he heaved a sigh profound,
The sympathetic swallow swept the ground.
* If it be, as they said, she was not fair,
Beauty ?s not beautiful to me,
But sceptred genius, aye inorbed, 10
Culminating in her sphere.
This Hermione absorbed
The lustre of the land and ocean,
Hills and islands, cloud and tree,
In her form and motion.
1 1 ask no bauble miniature,
Nor ringlets dead
Shorn from her comely head,
Now that morning not disdains
Mountains and the misty plains 20
Her colossal portraiture ;
They her heralds be,
Steeped in her quality,
And singers of her fame
Who is their Muse and dame.
HEEMIONE 105
' Higher, dear swallows ! mind not what I say.
Ah ! heedless how the weak are strong,
Say, was it just,
In thee to frame, in me to trust,
Thou to the Syrian couldst belong ? 3°
1 1 am of a lineage
That each for each doth fast engage ;
In old Bassora's schools, I seemed
Hermit vowed to books and gloom,—
111 -bested for gay bridegroom.
I was by thy touch redeemed ;
When thy meteor glances came,
We talked at large of worldly fate,
And drew truly every trait.
' Once I dwelt apart, 40
Now I live with all ;
As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side
Seems, by the traveller espied,
A door into the mountain heart,
So didst thou quarry and unlock
Highways for me through the rock.
* Now, deceived, thou wanderest
In strange lands unblest ;
And my kindred come to soothe me.
South wind is my next of blood ; 5°
He is come through fragrant wood,
Drugged with spice from climates warm,
And in every twinkling glade,
And twilight nook,
Unveils thy form.
106 HERMIONE
Out of the forest way
Forth paced it yesterday ;
And when I sat by the watercourse,
Watching the daylight fade,
It throbbed up from the brook. 60
* River, and rose, and crag, and bird,
Frost, and sun, and eldest night,
To me their aid preferred,
To me their comfort plight ; —
" Courage ! we are thine allies,
And with this hint be wise, —
The chains of kind
The distant bind ;
Deed thou doest she must do,
Above her will, be true ; 7°
And, in her strict resort
To winds and waterfalls,
And autumn's sunlit festivals,
To music, and to music's thought,
Inextricably bound,
She shall find thee, and be found.
Follow not her flying feet ;
Come to us herself to meet." ' 78
107
INITIAL, DAEMONIC, AND CELESTIAL LOVE
I
THE INITIAL LOVE
VENUS, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks, —
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged :
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent. 10
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste ;
With malice dared me to proclaim him,
That the maids and boys might name him.
Boy no more, he wears all coats,
Frocks, and blouses, capes, capotes ;
He bears no bow, or quiver, or wand,
Nor chaplet on his head or hand.
Leave his weeds and heed his eyes, —
Ail the rest he can disguise. 20
In the pit of his eye 's a spark
Would bring back day if it were dark ;
And, if I tell you all my thought,
Though I comprehend it not,
108 THE INITIAL LOVE
In those unfathomable orbs
Every function he absorbs.
He doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot,
And write, and reason, and compute,
And ride, and run, and have, and hold,
And whine, and flatter, and regret, 3°
And kiss, and couple, and beget,
By those roving eyeballs bold.
Undaunted are their courages,
Right Cossacks in their forages ;
Fleeter they than any creature, —
They are his steeds, and not his feature ;
Inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting,
Restless, predatory, hasting ;
And they pounce on other eyes
As lions on their prey ; 4°
And round their circles is writ,
Plainer than the day,
Underneath, within, above, —
Love — love — love — love.
He lives in his eyes ;
There doth digest, and work, and spin,
And buy, and sell, and lose, and win ;
He rolls them with delighted motion,
Joy -tides swell their mimic ocean.
Yet holds he them with tautest rein, 50
That they may seize and entertain
The glance that to their glance opposes,
Like fiery honey sucked from roses.
He palmistry can understand,
Imbibing virtue by his hand
As if it were a living root ;
THE INITIAL LOVE 109
The pulse of hands will make him mute ;
With all his force he gathers balms
Into those wise, thrilling palms.
Cupid is a casuist, 60
A mystic, and a cabalist, —
Can your lurking thought surprise,
And interpret your device
He is versed in occult science,
In magic, and in clairvoyance ;
Oft he keeps his fine ear strained,
And Reason on her tiptoe pained
For aery intelligence,
And for strange coincidence.
But it touches his quick heart 7°
When Fate by omens takes his part,
And chance-dropped hints from Nature's sphere
Deeply soothe his anxious ear.
Heralds high before him run ;
He has ushers many a one ;
He spreads his welcome where he goes,
And touches all things with his rose.
All things wait for and divine him,—
How shall I dare to malign him,
Or accuse the god of sport ? 80
I must end my true report,
Painting him from head to foot,
In as far as I took note,
Trusting well the matchless power
Of this young-eyed emperor
Will clear his fame from every cloud,
With the bards and with the crowd.
110 THE INITIAL LOVE
He is wilful, mutable,
Shy, untamed, inscrutable,
Swifter-fashioned than the fairies, 90
Substance mixed of pure contraries ;
His vice some elder virtue's token,
And his good is evil-spoken.
Failing sometimes of his own,
He is headstrong and alone ;
He affects the wood and wild,
Like a flower-hunting child ;
Buries himself in summer waves,
In trees, with beasts, in mines, and caves ;
Loves nature like a horned cow, 100
Bird, or deer, or caribou.
Shun him, nymphs, on the fleet horses !
He has a total world of wit ;
O how wise are his discourses !
But he is the arch-hypocrite,
And, through all science and all art,
Seeks alone his counterpart.
He is a Pundit of the East,
He is an augur and a priest,
And his soul will melt in prayer, no
But word and wisdom is a snare ;
Corrupted by the present toy
He follows joy, and only joy.
There is no mask but he will wear ;
He invented oaths to swear ;
He paints, he carves, he chants, he prays,
And holds all stars in his embrace,
Godlike, — but 't is for his fine pelf,
THE INITIAL LOVE 111
The social quintessence of self.
Well said I he is hypocrite, 120
And folly the end of his subtle wit !
He takes a sovran privilege
Not allowed to any liege ;
For he does go behind all law,
And right into himself does draw ;
For he is sovereignly allied, —
Heaven's oldest blood flows in his side, —
And interchangeably at one
With every king on every throne,
That no god dare say him nay, 130
Or see the fault, or seen betray :
He has the Muses by the heart,
And the Parcae all are of his part.
His many signs cannot be told ;
He has not one mode, but manifold,
Many fashions and addresses,
Piques, reproaches, hurts, caresses,
Arguments, lore, poetry,
Action, service, badinage ;
He will preach like a friar, 140
And jump like Harlequin ;
He will read like a crier,
And fight like a Paladin.
Boundless is his memory ;
Plans immense his term prolong ;
He is not of counted age,
Meaning always to be young.
And his wish is intimacy,
Intimater intimacy,
And a stricter privacy ; 15°
112 THE INITIAL LOVE
The impossible shall yet be done,
And, being two, shall still be one.
As the wave breaks to foam on shelves,
Then runs into a wave again,
So lovers melt their sundered selves,
Yet melted would be twain.
II
THE DAEMONIC AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE
MAN was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth,
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured.
Next his heart the fireside band
Of mother, father, sister, stand :
Names from awful childhood heard
Throbs of a wild religion stirred ;-
Virtue, to love, to hate them, vice ;
Till dangerous Beauty came, at last, 10
Till Beauty came to snap all ties ;
The maid, abolishing the past,
With lotus wine obliterates
Dear memory's stone-incarved traits,
And, by herself, supplants alone
Friends year by year more inly known.
When her calm eyes opened bright,
All were foreign in their light.
It was ever the self-same tale,
The first experience will not fail ; ao
Only two in the garden walked,
And with snake and seraph talked.
DAEMONIC AND CELESTIAL LOVE 113
But God said,
' I will have a purer gift ;
There is smoke in the flame ;
New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift,
And love without a name.
Fond children, ye desire
To please each other well ;
Another round, a higher, 30
Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair,
And selfish preference forbear ;
And in right deserving,
And without a swerving
Each from your proper state,
Weave roses for your mate.
* Deep, deep are loving eyes,
Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet ;
And the point is paradise,
Where their glances meet : 40
Their reach shall yet be more profound,
And a vision without bound :
The axis of those eyes sun-clear
Be the axis of the sphere :
So shall the lights ye pour amain
Go, without check or intervals,
Through from the empyrean walls
Unto the same again.'
Close, close to men,
lake undulating layer of air, 5°
Right above their heads,
The potent plain of Daemons spreads.
EMERSON I
114 THE DAEMONIC AND
Stands to each human soul its own,
For watch, and ward, and furtherance,
In the snares of Nature's dance ;
And the lustre and the grace
To fascinate each youthful heart,
Beaming from its counterpart,
Translucent through the mortal covers,
Is the Daemon's form and face. 60
To and fro the Genius hies, —
A gleam which plays and hovers
Over the maiden's head,
And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.
Unknown, albeit lying near,
To men, the path to the Daemon sphere ;
And they that swiftly come and go
Leave no track on the heavenly snow.
Sometimes the airy synod bends,
And the mighty choir descends, 70
And the brains of men thenceforth,
In crowded and in still resorts,
Teem with unwonted thoughts :
As, when a shor/er of meteors
Cross the orbit of the earth,
And, lit by fringent air,
Blaze near and far,
Mortals deem the planets bright
Have slipped their sacred bars,
And the lone seaman all the night 80
Sails, astonished, amid stars.
Beauty of a richer vein,
Graces of a subtler strain,
THE CELESTIAL LOVE 115
Unto men these moonmen lend,
And our shrinking sky extend.
So is man's narrow path
By strength and terror skirted ;
Also (from the song the wrath
Of the Genii he averted !
The Muse the truth uncoloured speaking) 90
The Daemons are self-seeking :
Their fierce and limitary will
Draws men to their likeness still.
The erring painter made Love blind, —
Highest Love who shines on all ;
Him, radiant, sharpest -sighted god,
None can bewilder ;
Whose eyes pierce
The universe,
Path-finder, road-builder, TOO
Mediator, royal giver ;
Rightly seeing, rightly seen,
Of joyful and transparent mien.
'Tis a sparkle passing
From each to each, from thee to me,
To and fro perpetually ;
Sharing all, daring all,
Levelling, displacing
Each obstruction, it unites
Equals remote, and seeming opposites. no
And ever and for ever Love
Delights to build a road :
Unheeded Danger near him strides,
Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
But Cupid wears another face,
12
116 THE DAEMONIC AND
Born into Daemons less divine :
His roses bleach apace,
His nectar smacks of wine.
The Daemon ever builds a wall,
Himself encloses and includes, 120
Solitude in solitudes :
In like sort his love doth fall.
He is an oligarch ;
He prizes wonder, fame, and mark ;
He loveth crowns ;
He scorneth drones ;
He doth elect
The beautiful and fortunate,
And the sons of intellect,
And the souls of ample fate, 130
Who the Future's gates unbar, —
Minions of the Morning Star.
In his prowess he exults,
And the multitude insults.
His impatient looks devour
Oft the humble and the poor ;
And, seeing his eye glare,
They drop their few pale flowers,
Gathered with hope to please,
Along the mountain towers, — 140
Lose courage, and despair.
He will never be gainsaid, —
Pitiless, will not be stayed ;
His hot tyranny
Burns up every other tie.
Therefore comes an hour from Jove
Which his ruthless will defies,
THE CELESTIAL LOVE 117
And the dogs of Fate unties.
Shiver the palaces of glass ;
Shrivel the rainbow-coloured walls, 150
Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt,
Secure as in the zodiac's belt ;
And the galleries and halls,
Wherein every siren sung,
Like a meteor pass.
For this fortune wanted root
In the core of God's abysm, —
Was a weed of self and schism •
And ever the Daemonic Love
Is the ancestor of wars, 160
And the parent of remorse.
Ill
THE CELESTIAL LOVE
HIGHER far,
Upward into the pure realm,
Over sun and star,
Over the flickering Daemon film,
Thou must mount for love ;
Into vision where all form
In one only form dissolves ;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves ; 10
Where the starred, eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term :
Where unlike things are like ;
Where good and ill.
118 THE CELESTIAL LOVE
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present, Future, shoot
Triple blossoms from one root ;
Substances at base divided
In their summits are united ; 20
There the holy essence rolls,
One through separated souls ;
And the sunny Aeon sleeps
Folding Nature in its deeps ;
And every fair and every good,
Known in part, or known impure,
To men below,
In their archetypes endure.
The race of gods,
Or those we erring own, 3°
Are shadows flitting up and down
In the still abodes.
The circles of that sea are laws
Which publish and which hide the cause.
Pray for a beam
Out of that sphere,
Thee to guide and to redeem.
0, what a load
Of care and toil,
By lying use bestowed, 40
From his shoulders falls who sees
The true astronomy,
The period of peace.
Counsel which the ages kept
Shall the well-born soul accept.
THB €»fcB8T!TAE LOVE 119
As the overhanging trees
Fill the lake with images, —
As garment draws the garment's hem,
Men their fortunes bring with them.
By right or wrong, 50
Lands and goods go to the strong.
Property will brutely draw
Still to the prpprietor ;
Silver to silver creep and wind,
And kind to kind.
Nor less the eternal poles
Of tendency distribute souls.
There need no vows to bind
Whom not each other seek, but find.
They give and take no .pledge or oath, — 60
Nature is the bond of both :
No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, —
Their noble meanings are their pawns.
Plain and cold is their address,
Power have they for tenderness ;
And, so thoroughly is known
Each other* s counsel by his own,
They can parley without meeting ;
Need is none of forms of greeting ;
They can well communicate 70
In their innermost estate ;
When each the other shall avoid,
Shall each by each be most enjoyed.
Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves
Do these celebrate their loves ;
Not by jewels, feasts, and savours,
120 THE CELESTIAL LOVE
Not by ribbons or by favours,
But by the sun-spark on the sea,
And the cloud-shadow on the lea,
The soothing lapse of morn to mirk, 80
And the cheerful round of work.
Their cords of love so public are,
They intertwine the farthest star :
The throbbing sea, the quaking earth,
Yield sympathy and signs of mirth ;
Is none so high, so mean is none,
But feels and seals this union ;
Even the fell Furies are appeased,
The good applaud, the lost are eased.
Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, 90
Bound for the just, but not beyond ;
Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
Of self in other still preferred,
But they have heartily designed
The benefit of broad mankind.
And they serve men austerely,
After their own genius, clearly,
Without a false humility;
For this is Love's nobility, —
Not to scatter bread and gold, 100
Goods and raiment bought and sold ;
But to hold fast his simple sense,
And speak the speech of innocence,
And with hand and body and blood,
To make his bosom-counsel good.
For he that feeds men serveth few ;
He serves dll who dares be true.
121
THE APOLOGY
THINK me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen ;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.
Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook ;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.
Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought ; 10
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.
There was never mystery
But 't is figured in the flowers ;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.
One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong ;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song, 20
122
MERLIN
THY trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear ;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Free, peremptory, clear.
No jingling serenader's art,
Nor tinkle of piano strings,
Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs.
The kingly bard
Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 10
As with hammer or with mace ;
That they may render back
Artful thunder, which conveys
Secrets of the solar track,
Sparks of the supersolar blaze.
Merlin's blows are strokes of fate,
Chiming with the forest tone,
When boughs buffet boughs in the wood ;
Chiming with the gasp and moan
Of the ice -imprisoned flood ; 20
With the pulse of manly hearts ;
With the voice of orators ;
With the din of city arts ;
With the cannonade of wars ;
With the marches of the brave ;
And prayers of might from martyrs' cave.
MERLIN 123
Great is the art,
Great be the manners, of the bard.
He shall not his brain encumber
With the coil of rhythm and number ; 30
But, leaving rule and pale forethought,
He shall aye climb
For his rhyme.
' Pass in, pass in,' the angels say,
1 In to the upper doors,
Nor count compartments of the floors,
But mount to paradise
By the stairway of surprise.'
Blameless master of the games,
King of sport that never shames, 40
He shall daily joy dispense
Hid in song's sweet influence.
Things more cheerly live and go,
What time the subtle mind
Sings aloud the tune whereto
Their pulses beat,
And march their feet,
And their members are combined.
By Sybarites beguiled,
He shall no task decline ; 50
Merlin's mighty line
Extremes of nature reconciled, —
Bereaved a tyrant of his will,
And made the lion mild.
Songs can the tempest still,
Scattered on the stormy air,
124 MERLIN
Mould the year to fair increase,
And bring in poetic peace.
He shall not seek to weave,
In weak, unhappy times, 60
Efficacious rhymes ;
Wait his returning strength.
Bird, that from the nadir's floor
To the zenith's top can soar,
The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's
length.
Nor profane affect to hit
Or compass that, by meddling wit,
Which only the propitious mind
Publishes when 'tis inclined.
There are open hours 70
When the God's will sallies free,
And the dull idiot might see
The flowing fortunes of a thousand years ; —
Sudden, at unawares,
Self -moved, fly- to the doors,
Nor sword of angels could reveal
What they conceal.
125
MERLIN
II
THE rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs ;
Balance-loving Nature
Made all things in pairs.
To every foot its antipode ;
Each colour with its counter glowed ;
To every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver ;
Flavour gladly blends with flavour ;
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough ; 10
And match the paired cotyledons.
Hands to hands, and feet to feet,
In one body grooms and brides ;
Eldest rite, two married sides
In every mortal meet.
Light's far furnace shines,
Smelting balls and bars,
Forging double stars,
Glittering twins and trines.
The animals are sick with love, 20
Lovesick with rhyme ;
Each with all propitious time
Into chorus wove.
Like the dancers' ordered band,
Thoughts come also hand in hand ;
126 MERLIN
In equal couples mated,
Or else alternated ;
Adding by their mutual gage,
One to other, health and age.
Solitary fancies go 30
Short-lived wandering to and fro,
Most like to bachelors,
Or an ungiven maid,
Not ancestors,
With no posterity to make the lie afraid,
Or keep truth undecayed.
Perfect-paired as eagle's wings,
Justice is the rhyme of things ; "
Trade and counting use
The self -same tuneful muse ; 40
And Nemesis,
Who with even matches odd,
Who athwart space redresses
The partial wrong,
Fills the just period,
And finishes the song.
Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife,
Murmur in the house of life,
Sung by the Sisters as they spin ;
In perfect time and measure they 50
Build and unbuild our echoing clay,
As the two twilights of the day
Fold us music-drunken in,
127
BACCHUS
BRING me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching
thiough
Under the Andes to the Cape,
Suffered no savour of the earth to scape.
Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root,
Which feels the acrid juice
Of Styx and Erebus ;
And turns the woe of Night, 10
By its own craft, to a more rich delight.
We buy ashes for bread ;
We buy diluted wine ;
Give me of the true, —
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of heaven,
Draw everlasting dew ;
Wine of wine,
Blood of the world,
Form of forms, and mould of statures, 20
That I intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures ;
The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well.
128 BACCHUS
Wine that is shed
Like the torrents of the sun
Up the horizon walls,
Or like the Atlantic streams, which run
When the South Sea calls. 30
Water and bread,
Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting
Wine which is already man,
Food which teach and reason can.
Wine which Music is, —
, Music and wine are one, —
That I, drinking this,
Shall hear far Chaos talk with me ;
Kings unborn shall walk with me ; 40
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man.
Quickened so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.
I thank the joyful juice
For all I know ; —
Winds of remembering
Of the ancient being blow,
And seeming-solid walls of use
Open and flow. 50
Pour, Bacchus ! the remembering wine ;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine !
Vine for vine be antidote,
And the grape requite the lote !
BACCHUS 129
Haste to cure the old despair, —
Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched ;
Give them again to shine ;
Let wine repair what this undid ;
And where the infection slid, 60
A dazzling memory revive ;
Refresh the faded tints,
Recut the aged prints,
And write my old adventures with the pen
Which on the first day drew,
Upon the tablets blue,
The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.
130
LOSS AND GAIN
VIRTUE runs before the Muse,
And defies her skill ;
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.
Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her
Just to please a poet's pride,
To parade her splendour.
The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers ;
Must throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers.
Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire
His lost tools may overpay,
And better his desire.
131
MEROPS
WHAT care I, so they stand the same, —
Things of the heavenly mind, —
How long the power to give them name
Tarries yet behind ?
Thus far to-day your favours reach,
0 fair, appeasing presences !
Ye taught my lips a single speech,
And a thousand silences.
Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day ;
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say.
K2
132
THE HOUSE
THERE is no architect
Can build as the Muse can ;
She is skilful to select
Materials for her plan ;
Slow and warily to choose
Rafters of immortal pine,
Or cedar incorruptible,
Worthy her design.
She threads dark Alpine forests,
Or valleys by the sea, 10
In many lands, with painful steps,
Ere she can find a tree.
She ransacks mines and ledges,
And quarries every rock,
To hew the famous adamant
For each eternal block.
She lays her beams in music,
In music every one,
To the cadence of the whirling world
Which dances round the sun ; 20
That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But, for the love of happy souls,
Outlive the newest stars.
133
SAADI
TREES in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
God, who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire, 10
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, * Sit aloof ; '
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium, —
Ever, when twain together play,
Shall the harp be dumb.
Many may come,
But one shall sing ;
To touch the string,
The harp is dumb. 20
Though there come a million,
Wise Saadi dwells alone.
Yet Saadi loved the race of men, —
No churl, immured in cave or den ;
134 SAADI
In bower and hall
Ho wants them all,
Nor can dispense
With Persia for his audience ;
They must give ear,
Grow red with joy and white with fear ; 30
But he has no companion ;
Come ten, or come a million,
Good Saadi dwells alone.
Be thou ware where Saadi dwells ;
Wisdom of the gods is he, —
Entertain it reverently
Gladly round that golden lamp
Sylvan deities encamp,
And simple maids and noble youth
Are welcome to the man of truth. 40
Most welcome they who need him most,
They feed the spring which they exhaust ;
For greater need
Draws better deed :
But, critic, spare thy vanity,
Nor show thy pompous parts,
To vex with odious subtlety
The cheerer of men's hearts.
Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say
Endless dirges to decay, 50
Never in the blaze of light
Lose the shudder of midnight ;
Pale at overflowing noon
Hear wolves barking at the moon ;
SAADI 135
In the bower of dalliance sweet
Hear the far Avenger's feet ;
And shake before those awful Powers,
Who in their pride forgive not ours.
Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach :
' Bard, when thee would Allah teach, 60
And lift thee to his holy mount,
He sends thee from his bitter fount
Wormwood,— saying, " Go thy ways,
Drink not the Malaga of praise,
But do the deed thy fellows hate,
And compromise thy peaceful state ;
Smite the white breasts which thee fed ;
Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head
Of them thou shouldst have comforted ;
For out of woe and out of crime 70
Draws the heart a lore sublime." '
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the high gods love tragedy ;
For Saadi sat in the sun,
And thanks was his contrition ;
For haircloth and for bloody whips,
Had active hands and smiling lips ;
And yet his runes he rightly read,
And to his folk his message sped.
Sunshine in his heart transferred 80
Lighted each transparent word,
And well could honouring Persia learn
What Saadi wished to say ;
For Saadi's nightly stars did burn
Brighter than Dschami's day.
36 SAADI
Whispered the Muse in Saadi' s cot :
* 0 gentle Saadi, listen not,
Tempted by thy praise of wit,
Or by thirst and appetite
For the talents not thine own, 90
To sons of contradiction.
Never, son of eastern morning,
Follow falsehood, follow scorning.
Denounce who will, who will deny,
And pile the hills to scale the sky ;
Let theist, atheist, pantheist,
Define and wrangle how they list,
Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer, —
But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer,
Unknowing war, unknowing crime, 100
Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme ;
Heed not what the brawlers say,
Heed thou only Saadi's lay.
' Let the great world bustle on
With war and trade, with camp and town ;
A thousand men shall dig and eat ;
At forge and furnace thousands sweat ;
And thousands sail the purple sea,
And give or take the stroke of war,
Or crowd the market and bazaar ; no
Oft shall war end, and peace return,
And cities rise where cities burn,
Ere one man my hill shall climb,
Who can turn the golden rhyme.
Let them manage how they may,
Heed thou only Saadi's lay.
SAADI 137
Seek the living among the dead, —
Man in man is imprisoned ;
Barefooted Dervish is not poor,
If fate unlock his bosom's door, 120
So that what his eye hath seen
His tongue can paint as bright, as keen;
And what his tender heart hath felt
With equal fire thy heart shall melt.
For, whom the Muses smile upon,
And touch with soft persuasion,
His words like a storm-wind can bring
Terror and beauty on their wing ;
In his every syllable
Lurketh nature veritable ; 130
And though he speak in midnight dark, —
In heaven no star, on earth no spark, —
Yet before the listener's eye
Swims the world in ecstasy,
The forest waves, the morning breaks,
The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes,
Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be,
And life pulsates in rock or tree.
Saadi, so far thy words shall reach :
Suns rise and set in Saadi's speech ! ' 140
And thus to Saadi said the Muse :
' Eat thou the bread which men refuse ;
Flee from the goods which from thee flee ;
Seek nothing, — Fortune seeketh thee.
Nor mount, nor dive ; all good things keep
The midway of the eternal deep.
138 SAADI
Wish not to fill the isles with eyes
To fetch thee birds of paradise :
On thine orchard's edge belong
All the brags of plume and song ; 150
Wise Ali's sunbright sayings pass
For proverbs in the market-place ;
Through mountains bored by regal art,
Toil whistles as he drives his cart.
Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,
A poet or a friend to find :
Behold, he watches at the door !
Behold his shadow on the floor !
Open innumerable doors
The heaven where unveiled Allah pours 160
The flood of truth, the flood of good,
The Seraph's and the Cherub's food :
Those doors are men : the Pariah hind
Admits thee to the perfect Mind.
Seek not beyond thy cottage wall
Redeemers that can yield thee all :
While thou sittest at thy door
On the desert's yellow floor,
Listening to the grey-haired crones,
Foolish gossips, ancient drones, 170
Saadi, see ! they rise in stature
To the height of mighty Nature,
And the secret stands revealed
Fraudulent Time in vain concealed,—
That blessed gods in servile masks
Plied for thee thy household tasks.'
139
HOLIDAYS
FROM fall to spring the russet acorn,
Fruit beloved of maid and boy,
Lent itself beneath the forest
To be the children's toy.
Pluck it now ! In vain,— thou canst not ;
Its root has pierced yon shady mound ;
Toy no longer — it has duties ;
It is anchored in the ground.
Year by year the rose-lipped maiden,
Playfellow of young and old, 10
Was frolic sunshine, dear to all men,
More dear to one than mines of gold.
Whither went the lovely hoyden ?
Disappeared in blessed wife ;
Servant to a wooden cradle,
Living in a baby's life.
Still thou playest ; — short vacation
Fate grants each to stand aside ;
Now must thou be man and artist,—
Tis the turning of the tide, 20
140
PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
THE sinful painter drapes his goddess warm,
Because she still is naked, being dressed :
The godlike sculptor will not so deform
Beauty, which limbs and flesh enough invest.
141
FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ
The poems of Hafiz are held by the Persians to be allegoric and
mystical. His German editor, Von Hammer, remarks on the
following poem, that, * though in appearance anacreontic, it
may be regarded as one of the best of those compositions
which earned for Hafiz the honourable title of " Tongue of
the Secret ".'
BUTLER, fetch the ruby wine
Which with sudden greatness fills us ;
Pour for me, who in my spirit
Fail in courage and performance.
Bring this philosophic stone,
Karun's treasure, Noah's age ,
Haste, that by thy means I open
All the doors of luck and life.
Bring to me the liquid fire
Zoroaster sought in dust : 10
To Hafiz, revelling, 't is allowed
To pray to Matter and to Fire.
Bring the wine of Jamschid's glass,
Which glowed, ere time was, in the Neant ;
Bring it me, that through its force
I, as Jamschid, see through worlds.
Wisely said the Kaisar Jamschid,
' The world 's not worth a barleycorn ' :
Let flute and lyre lordly speak ;
Lees of wine outvalue crowns. 20
Bring me, boy, the veiled beauty,
Who in ill-famed houses sits :
Bring her forth ; my honest name
142 FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ
Freely barter I for wine.
Bring me, boy, the fire-water ; —
Drinks the lion, the woods burn ;
Give it me, that I storm heaven,
And tear the net from the arch wolf.
Wine wherewith the Houris teach
Souls the ways of paradise ! 30
On the living coals I'll set it,
And therewith my brain perfume.
Bring me wine, through whose effulgence
Jam and Chosroes yielded light ;
Wine, that to the flute I sing
Where is Jam, and where is Kauss.
Bring the blessing of old times, —
Bless the old, departed shahs !
Bring me wine which spendeth lordship,
Wine whose pureness searcheth hearts ; 40
Bring it me, the shah of hearts !
Give me wine to wash me clean
Of the weather-stains of cares,
See the countenance of luck.
Whilst I dwell in spirit -gardens,
Wherefore stand I shackled here ?
Lo, this mirror shows me all !
Drunk, I speak of purity,
Beggar, I of lordship speak ;
When Hafiz in his revel sings, 50
Shouteth Sohra in her sphere.
Fear the changes of a
Bring wine which increases life.
Since the world is all untrue,
FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ 143
Let the trumpets thee remind
How the crown of Kobad vanished.
Be not certain of the world,—
'Twill not spare to shed thy blood.
Desperate of the world's affair,
Came I running to the wine-house. 60
Bring me wine which maketh glad,
That I may my steed bestride,
Through the course career with Rustem, —
Gallop to my heart's content ;
That I reason quite expunge,
And plant banners on the worlds.
Let us make our glasses kiss ;
Let us quench the sorrow-cinders.
To-day let us drink together ;
Now and then will never agree. 70
Whoso has arranged a banquet
Is with glad mind satisfied,
'Scaping from the snares of Dews.
Woe for youth ! 't is gone in the wind :
Happy he who spent it well !
Bring wine, that I overspring
Both worlds at a single leap.
Stole, at dawn, from glowing spheres
Call of Houris to my sense : —
' 0 lovely bird, delicious soul, 80
Spread thy pinions, break thy cage ;
Sit on the roof of seven domes,
Where the spirits take their rest/
In the time of Bisurdschimihr,
Menutscheher's beauty shined.
144 FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ
On the beaker of Nushirvan,
Wrote they once in elder times,
* Hear the counsel ; learn from us
Sample of the course of things :
The earth — it is a place of sorrow, 90
Scanty joys are here below ;
Who has nothing has no sorrow.'
Where is Jam, and where his cup ?
Solomon and his mirror, where ?
Which of the wise masters knows
What time Kauss and Jam existed ?
When those heroes left this world,
They left nothing but their names.
Bind thy heart not to the earth ;
When thou goest, come not back ; 100
Fools spend on the world their hearts, —
League with it is feud with heaven :
Never gives it what thou wishest.
A cup of wine imparts the sight
Of the five heaven-domes with nine steps :
Whoso can himself renounce
Without support shall walk thereon ; —
Who discreet is is not wise.
Give me, boy, the Kaisar cup,
Which rejoices heart and soul. no
Under wine and under cup
Signify we purest love.
Youth like lightning disappears ;
Life goes by us as the wind.
Leave the dwelling with six doors,
And the serpent with nine heads ;
FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ 145
Life and silver spend thou freely
If thou honourest the soul.
Haste into the other life ;
All is vain save God alone. 120
Give me, boy, this toy of Daemons :
When the cup of Jam was lost,
Him availed the world no more.
Fetch the wineglass made of ice ;
Wake the torpid heart with wine.
Every clod of loam beneath us
Is a skull of Alexander ;
Oceans are the blood of princes ;
Desert sands the dust of beauties.
More than one Darius was there 130
Who the whole world overcame ;
But, since these gave up the ghost,
Thinkest thou they never were ?
Boy, go from me to the Shah ;
Say to him, * Shah, crowned as Jam,
Win thou first the poor man's heart,
Then the glass ; so know the world.
Empty sorrows from the earth
Canst thou drive away with wine.
Now in thy throne's recent beauty, 140
In the flowing tide of power,
Moon of fortune, mighty king,
Whose tiara sheddeth lustre,
Peace secure to fish and fowl,
Heart and eye-sparkle to saints ; —
Shoreless is the sea of praise ;
I content me with a prayer : —
EMERSON L
146 FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ
From Nisami's lyric pagp,
Fairest ornament of speech,
Here a verse will I recite, " 150
Verse more beautiful than pearls :
" More kingdoms wait thy diadem
Than are known to thee by name ;
Thee may sovran Destiny
Lead to victory day by day ! " '
147
GHASELLE
FROM THE PEESIAN OF HAFIZ
OF Paradise, 0 hermit wise,
Let us renounce the thought ;
Of old therein our names of sin
Allah recorded not.
Who dear to God on earthly sod
No rice or barley plants,
The same is glad that life is had,
Though corn he wants.
0 just fakir, with brow austere,
Forbid me not the vine ;
On the first day, poor Hafiz' clay
Was kneaded up with wine.
Thy mind the mosque and cool kiosk,
Spare fast and orisons ;
Mine me allows the drinking-house,
And sweet chase of the nuns.
He is no dervise, Heaven slights his service,
Who shall refuse
There in the banquet to pawn his blanket
For Schiraz' juice.
Who his friend's skirt or hem of his shirt
Shall spare to pledge,
To him Eden's bliss and angel's kiss
Shall want their edge.
L2
148 GHASELLE
Up ! Hafiz, grace from high God's face
Beams on thee pure ;
Shy thou not hell, and trust thou well,
Heaven is secure. 28
149
XENOPHANES
BY fate, not option, frugal Nature gave
One scent to hyson and to wall-flower,
One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,
One aspect to the desert and the lake.
It was her stern necessity : all things
Are of one pattern made ; bird, beast, and flower,
Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character,
Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
And are but one. Beheld far off, they part
As God and devil ; bring them to the mind, 10
They dull its edge with their monotony.
To know one element, explore another,
And in the second reappears the first.
The specious panorama of a year
But multiplies the image of a day, —
A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame ;
And universal Nature, through her vast
And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet,
Repeats one note. 19
150
THE DAY'S RATION
WHEN I was born,
From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, * This be thy portion, child ; this chalice,
Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw
From my great arteries, — nor less, nor more.'
All substances the cunning chemist Time
Melts down into that liquor of my life, —
Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust.
And whether I am angry or content,
Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, ic
All he distils into sidereal wine
And brims my little cup ; heedless, alas !
Of all he sheds how little it will hold,
How much runs over on the desert sands.
If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray,
And I uplift myself into its heaven,
The needs of the first sight absorb my blood,
And all the following hours of the day
Drag a ridiculous age.
To-day, when friends approach, and every hour
Brings book, or star-bright scroll of genius, 21
The little cup will hold not a bead more.
And all the costly liquor runs to waste ;
Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop
So to be husbanded for poorer days.
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice ?
Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught
THE DAY'S RATION 151
After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills
My apprehension ? why seek Italy,
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea 30
Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn
The nearest matters for a thousand days ?
152
BLIGHT
GIVE me truths ;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and agrimony,
Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes, and
sundew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell 10
Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
By sweet affinities to human flesh,
Driving the foe and stablishing the friend, —
0, that were much, and I could be a part
Of the round day, related to the sun
And planted world, and full executor
Of their imperfect functions.
But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes, 20
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
The old men studied magic in the flowers,
And human fortunes in astronomy,
And an omnipotence in chemistry,
Preferring things to names, for these were men,
BLIGHT 153
Were Unitarians of the united world,
And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars, 30
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
The injured elements say, * Not in us ' ;
And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant, and mineral say, ' Not in us/
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain ;
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due ; 41
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld ;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short, 50
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term ;
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe ;
And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child ;
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
154 BLIGHT
And prizes *of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped, 60
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.
155
MUSKETAQUID
BECAUSE I was content with these poor fields,
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And through my rock-like, solitary wont
Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. 10
For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring
Visits the valley ; — break away the clouds, —
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird,
Blue-coated, — flying before from tree to tree,
Courageous, sing a delicate overture
To lead the tardy concert of the year.
Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;
And wide around, the marriage of the plants 20
Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain
The surge of summer's beauty ; dell and crag,
Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade,
Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliS
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.
Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
156 MUSKETAQUID
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here in pine houses built of new fallen trees, 30
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell.
Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,
Or, it may be, a picture ; to these men,
The landscape is an armoury of powers,
Which, one by one, they know to draw and use.
They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work ;
They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,
And, like the chemist 'mid his loaded jars,
Draw from each stratum its adapted use
To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.
They turn the frost upon their chemic heap, 41
They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,
They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,
And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,
Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods
O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,
They fight the ejements with elements,
(That one would say, meadow and forest walked,
Transmuted in these men to rule their like,)
And by the order in the field disclose 50
The order regnant in the yeoman's brain.
What these strong masters wrote at large in miles,
I followed in small copy in my acre ;
For there 's no rood has not a star above it ;
The cordial quality of pear or plum
Ascends as gladly in a single tree
As in broad orchards resonant with bees ;
And every atom poises for itself,
MUSKETAQUED 157
And for the whole. The gentle deities
Showed me the lore of colours and of sounds, 60
The innumerable tenements of beauty,
The miracle of generative force,
Far-reaching concords of astronomy
Felt in the plants, and in the punctual birds ;
Better, the linked purpose of the whole,
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty
In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave.
The polite found me impolite ; the great
Would mortify me, but in vain ; for still
I am a willow of the wilderness, 70
Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts
My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds.
For thus the wood -gods murmured in my ear :
' Dost love our manners ? Canst thou silent lie ?
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass
Into the winter night's extinguished mood ?
Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 80
And being latent feel thyself no less ?
As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,
The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure,
Yet envies none, none are unenviable/
158
DIRGE
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field,
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn ?
In the long sunny afternoon,
The plain was full of ghosts ;
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
The winding Concord gleamed below,
Pouring as wide a flood 10
As when my brothers, long ago,
Came with me to the wood.
But they are gone, — the holy ones
Who trod with me this lovely vale ;
The strong, star-bright companions
Are silent, low, and pale.
My good, my noble, in their prime,
Who made this world the feast it was,
Who learned with me the lore of time,
Who loved this dwelling-place ! 20
They took this valley for their toy,
They played with it in every mood ;
A cell for prayer, a hall for joy, —
They treated nature as they would.
DIRGE 159
They coloured the horizon round ;
Stars flamed and faded as they bade ;
All echoes hearkened for their sound, —
They made the woodlands glad or mad.
I touch this flower of silken leaf,
Which once our childhood knew ; 30
Its soft leaves wound me with a grief
Whose balsam never grew.
Hearken to yon pine-warbler
Singing aloft in the tree !
Hearest thou, 0 traveller,
What he singeth to me ?
Not unless God made sharp thine ear
With sorrow such as mine,
Out of that delicate lay couldst thou
Its heavy tale divine. 40
8 Go, lonely man,' it saith ;
' They loved thee from their birth ;
Their hands were pure, and pure their faith, —
There are no such hearts on earth.
* Ye drew one mother's milk,
One chamber held ye all ;
A very tender history
Did in your childhood fall.
* Ye cannot unlock your heart,
The key is gone with them ; 5°
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.'
160
THRENODY
THE South-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire ;
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore ;
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs ;
And he, the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round, —
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom, —
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favour of the loving Day, —
Has disappeared from the Day's eye ;
Far and wide she cannot find him ;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Returned this day, the south-wind searches,
And finds young pines and budding birches ;
But finds not the budding man ;
Nature, who lost, cannot remake him ;
THRENODY 161
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him ;
Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.
And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,
0, whither tend thy feet ? 31
I had the right, few days ago,
Thy steps to watch, thy place to know ;
How have I forfeited the right ?
Hast thou forgot me in a new delight ?
I hearken for thy household cheer,
0 eloquent child !
Whose voice, an equal messenger,
Conveyed thy meaning mild.
What though the pains and joys 40
Whereof it spoke were toys
Fitting his age and ken,
Yet fairest dames and bearded men,
Who heard the sweet request,
So gentle, wise, and grave,
Bended with joy to his behest,
And let the world's affairs go by,
Awhile to share his cordial game,
Or mend his wicker wagon -frame,
Still plotting how their hungry ear 50
That winsome voice again might hear ;
For his lips could well pronounce
Words that were persuasions.
Gentlest guardians marked serene
His early hope, his liberal mien ;
Took counsel from his guiding eyes
To make this wisdom earthly wise.
1MERSON M
162 THRENODY
Ah, vainly do these eyes recall
The school-march, each day's festival,
When every morn my bosom glowed 60
To watch the convoy on the road ;
The babe in willow wagon closed,
With rolling eyes and face composed ;
With children forward and behind,
Like Cupids studiously inclined ;
And he the chieftain paced beside,
The centre of the troop allied,
With sunny face of sweet repose,
To guard the babe from fancied foes.
The little captain innocent 70
Took the eye with him as he went ;
Each village senior paused to scan
And speak the lovely caravan.
From the window I look out
To mark thy beautiful parade,
Stately marching in cap and coat
To some tune by fairies played ; —
A music heard by thee alone
To works as noble led thee on.
Now Love and Pride, alas ! in vain, 80
Up and down their glances strain.
The painted sled stands where it stood ;
The kennel by the corded wood ;
The gathered sticks to stanch the wall
Of the snow -tower, when snow should fall ;
The ominous hole he dug in the sand,
And childhood's castles built or planned ;
THRENODY 163
His daily haunts I well discern, —
The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn,—
And every inch of garden ground 90
Paced by the blessed feet around,
From the roadside to the brook
Whereinto he loved to look.
Step the meek birds where erst they ranged ;
The wintry garden lies unchanged ;
The brook into the stream runs on ;
But the deep-eyed boy is gone.
On that shaded day,
Dark with more clouds than tempests are,
When thou didst yield thy innocent breath 100
In birdlike heavings unto death,
Night came, and Nature had not thee ;
I said, ' We are mates in misery/
The morrow dawned with needless glow ;
Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow ;
Each tramper started ; but the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden,— they were bound and still.
There's not a sparrow or a wren, no
There's not a blade of autumn grain,
Which the four seasons do not tend,
And tides of life and increase lend ;
And every chick of every bird,
And weed and rock-moss is preferred.
0 ostrich-like forgetfulness !
0 loss of larger in the less !
M2
164 THRENODY
Was there no star that could be sent,
No watcher in the firmament,
No angel from the countless host 120
That loiters round the crystal coast,
Could stoop to heal that only child,
Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,
And keep the blossom of the earth,
Which all her harvests were not worth ?
Not mine, — I never called thee mine,
But Nature's heir, — if I repine,
And seeing rashly torn and moved
Not what I made, but what I loved,
Grow early old with grief that thou 130
Must to the wastes of Nature go, —
'Tis because a general hope
Was quenched, and ail must doubt and grope.
For flattering planets seemed to say
This child should ills of ages stay,
By wondrous tongue, and guided pen,
Bring the flown Muses back to men.
Perchance not he but Nature ailed,
The world and not the infant failed.
It was not ripe yet to sustain 140
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own,
And, pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.
His beauty once their beauty tried ;
They could not feed him, and he died,
And wandered backward as in scorn,
To wait an aeon to be born.
THRENODY 165
111 day which made this beauty waste, 150
Plight broken, this high face defaced !
Some went and came about the dead ;
And some in books of solace read ;
Some to their friends the tidings say ;
Some went to write, some went to pray ;
One tarried here, there hurried one ;
But their heart abode with none.
Covetous death bereaved us all,
To aggrandize one funeral.
The eager fate which carried theo 160
Took the largest part of me :
For this losing is true dying ;
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This his slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.
0 child of paradise,
Boy who made dear his father's home,
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come,
1 am too much bereft. 170
The world dishonoured thou hast left.
0 truth's and nature's costly lie !
0 trusted broken prophecy !
0 richest fortune sourly crossed !
Born for the future, to the future lost !
THE deep Heart answered, * Wecpcst thou ?
Worthier cause for passion wild
If I had not taken the child.
166 * THRENODY
And deemest thou^aa those who pore,
With aged eyes, &hort way before, — 180
Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost ?
Taught he not thee — the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man ?
To be alone wilt thou begin
When worlds of lovers hem thee in ?
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen Nature's carnival, 190
The pure shall see by their own will,
Which overflowing Love shall fill,
'Tis not within the force of fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou ?
I gave thee sight — where is it now ?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, bible, or of speech ;
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table,
As far as the incommunicable ; 200
Taught thee each private sign to raise,
Lit by the supersolar blaze.
Past utterance, and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature's heart ;
And though no Muse can these impart,
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
* I came to thee as to a friend ;
Dearest, to thee I did not send 210
THRENODY 167
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the slky,
Lovely locks, a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder,
That thou might'st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art :
And, as the great all -loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might'st break thy daily bread
With prophet, saviour, and head ; 220
That thou might'st cherish for thine own
The riches of sweet Mary's Son,
Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon.
And thoughtest thou such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest ?
Would rushing life forget her laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause ?
High omens ask diviner guess ;
Not to be conned to tediousness.
And know my higher gifts unbind 230
The zone that girds the incarnate mind.
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous, whirling pool;
When frail Nature can no more,
Then the Spirit strikes the hour :
My servant Death, with solving rite,
Pours finite into infinite.
4 Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go ?
Nail the wild star to its track 240
On the half-climbed zodiac ?
168 THRENODY
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one, —
Wilt thou transfix and make it none ?
Its onward force too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament ?
Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,
Talker ! the unreplying Fate ? 250
Nor see the genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self -announced its hour of doom ?
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built to last a season ;
Masterpiece of love benign,
Fairer that expansive reason
Whose omen 't is, and sign.
Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 260
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show ?
Verdict which accumulates
From lengthening scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned, —
Saying, What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent ;
Hearts are dust, hearts9 loves remain ;
Hear f 8 love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker ; fetch thine eye 270
Up to his style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold
Built he heaven stark and cold ;
THRENODY 169
No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass, and scented weeds ;
Or like a traveller's fleeing tent,
Or bow above the tempest bent ;
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims ;
Built of furtherance and pursuing, 280
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness ;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.' 289
170
HYMN
SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE
CONCORD MONUMENT
April 19, 1836
BY the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept ;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone ;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES
(1867)
MAY-DAY
DAUGHTER of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip, three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland ;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land ?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or clapping of shepherd's hands,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day ?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 'twas the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
172 MAY-DAY
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even unto May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay ? or hark,
Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry 3°
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token
That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things. 40
Beneath the calm, within the light,
A hid unruly appetite
Of swifter life, a surer hope,
Strains every sense to larger scope,
Impatient to anticipate
The halting steps of aged Fate.
Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl :
When Nature falters, fain would zeal
Grasp the felloes of her wheel,
And grasping give the orbs another whirl. 50
Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball !
And sun this frozen side,
Bring hither back the robin's call,
Bring back the tulip's pride.
MAY-DAY 173
Why chidest thou the tardy Spring ?
The hardy bunting does not chide ;
The blackbirds make the maples ring
With social cheer and jubilee ;
The redwing flutes his o-ia-Zee,
The robins know the melting snow ; 60
The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves ;
And thou, by science all undone,
Why only must thy reason fail
To see the southing of the sun ?
As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,
So Spring will not, foolish fond,
Mix polar night with tropic glow, 70
Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,
Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,
But she has the temperance
Of the gods, whereof she is one, —
Masks her treasury of heat
Under east- winds crossed with sleet.
Plants and birds and humble creatures
Well accept her rule austere ;
Titan-born, to hardy natures
Cold is genial and dear. 80
As Southern wrath to Northern right
Is but straw to anthracite ;
As in the day of sacrifice,
When heroes piled the pyre,
174 MAY-DAY
The dismal Massachusetts ice
Burned more than others' fire,
So Spring guards with surface cold
The garnered heat of ages old :
Hers to sow the seed of bread,
That man and all the kinds be fed ; 90
And, when the sunlight fills the hours,
Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.
The world rolls round, — mistrust it not, —
Befalls again what once befell ;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
When late I walked, in earlier days,
All was stiff and stark ;
Knee-deep snows choked all the ways, 100
In the sky no spark ;
Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,
Struggling through the drifted roads ;
The whited desert knew me not,
Snow-ridges masked each darling spot ;
The summer dells, by genius haunted,
One arctic moon had disenchanted.
All the sweet secrets therein hid
By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.
Eldest mason, Frost, had piled, no
With wicked ingenuity,
Swift cathedrals in the wild ;
The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts
In the star-lit minster aisled.
MAY-DAY 175
I found no joy : the icy wind
Might rule the forest to his mind.
Who would freeze in frozen brakes ?
Back to books and sheltered home,
And wood-fire flickering on the walls,
To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games, 120
Without the baffled north-wind calls.
But soft ! a sultry morning breaks ;
The cowslips make the brown brook gay ;
A happier hour, a longer day.
Now the sun leads in the May,
Now desire of action wakes,
And the wish to roam.
The caged linnet in the spring
Hearkens for the choral glee,
When his fellows on the wing 130
Migrate from the Southern Sea ;
When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,
And the new-born tendrils twine,
The old wine darkling in the cask
Feels the bloom on the living vine,
And bursts the hoops at hint of spring :
And so, perchance, in Adam's race,
Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace
Survived the Flight, and swam the Flood,
And wakes the wish in youngest blood 140
To tread the forfeit Paradise,
And feed pnce more the exile's eyes ;
And ever when the happy child
In May beholds the blooming wild,
176 MAY-DAY
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing,
' Onward/ he cries, ' your baskets bring, —
In the next field is air more mild,
And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier spring.'
Not for a regiment's parade,
Nor evil laws or rulers made, 150
Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,
But for a lofty sign
Which the Zodiac threw,
That the bondage-days are told,
And waters free as winds shall flow.
Lo ! how all the tribes combine
To rout the flying foe.
See, every patriot oak-leaf throws
His elfin length upon the snows,
Not idle, since the leaf all day 160
Draws to the spot the solar ray,
Ere sunset quarrying inches down,
And half-way to the mosses brown ;
While the grass beneath the rime
Has hints of the propitious time,
And upward pries and perforates
Through the cold slab a thousand gates,
Till green lances peering through
Bend happy in the welkin blue.
April cold with dropping rain 170
Willows and lilacs brings again,
The whistle of returning birds,
And trumpet -lowing of the herds.
The scarlet maple-keys betray
What potent blood hath modest May ;
MAY-DAY 177
What fiery force the earth renews,
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues ;
Joy shed in rosy waves abroad
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.
Hither rolls the storm of heat; 180
I feel its finer billows beat
Like a sea which me infolds ;
Heat with viewless fingers moulds,
Swells, and mellows, and matures,
Paints, and flavours, and allures,
Bird and brier inly warms,
Still enriches and transforms,
Gives the reed and lily length,
Adds to oak and oxen strength,
Boils the world in tepid lakes, 190
Burns the world, yet burnt remakes ;
Enveloping heat, enchanted robe,
Wraps the daisy and the globe,
Transforming what it doth infold,
Life out of death, new out of old,
Painting fawns' and leopards' fells,
Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells,
Fires gardens with a joyful blaze
Of tulips, in the morning's rays.
The dead log touched bursts into leaf, 200
The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf.
What god is this imperial Heat,
Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat ?
Doth it bear hidden in its heart
Water-line patterns of all art,
All figures, organs, hues, and graces?
178 MAY-DAY
Is it Daedalus ? is it Love ?
Or walks in mask almighty Jove,
And drops from Power's redundant horn
All seeds of beauty to be born ? 210
Where shall we keep the holiday,
And duly greet the entering May ?
Too strait and low our cottage doors,
And all unmeet our carpet floors ;
Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall,
Suffice to hold the festival.
Up and away ! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods :
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy ; 220
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new -delivered streams,
And the murmuring rivers of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees,
Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,
Which for a spike of tender green
Bartered its powdery cap ;
And the colours of joy in the bird,
And the love in its carol heard,
Frog and lizard in holiday coatvS, 230
And turtle brave in his golden spots ;
We will hear the tiny roar
Of the insects evermore,
While cheerful cries of crag and plain
Reply to the thunder of river and main.
As poured the flood of the ancient sea
Spilling over mountain chains,
MAY-DAY 179
Bending forests as bends the sedge,
Faster flowing o'er the plains, — 239
A world -wide wave with a foaming edge
That rims the running silver sheet, —
So pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o'er the land,
Painting artless paradises,
Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,
Fanning secret fires which glow
In columbine and clover-blow,
Climbing the northern zones,
Where a thousand pallid towns
Lie like cockles by the main, 250
Or tented armies on a plain.
The million-handed sculptor moulds
Quaintest bud and blossom folds,
The million-handed painter pours
Opal hues and purple dye ;
Azaleas flush the island floors,
And the tints of heaven reply.
Wreaths for the May ! for happy Spring
To-day shall all her dowry bring,
The love of kind, the joy, the grace, 260
Hymen of element and race,
Knowing well to celebrate
With song and hue and star and state,
With tender light and youthful cheer,
The spousais of the new-born year.
Lo Love's inundation poured
Over space and race abroad !
N 2
180 MAY-DAY
Spring is strong and virtuous,
Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,
Quickening underneath the mould 270
Grains beyond the price of gold.
So deep and large her bounties are,
That one broad, long midsummer day
Shall to the planet overpay
The ravage of a year of war.
Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,
And send the nectar round ;
The feet that slid so long on sleet
Are glad to feel the ground.
Fill and saturate each kind 280
With good according to its mind,
Fill each kind and saturate
With good agreeing with its fate,
Willow and violet, maiden and man.
The bitter-sweet, the haunting air,
Creepeth, bloweth everywhere ;
It preys on all, all prey on it,
Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,
Stings the strong with enterprise,
Makes travellers long for Indian skies, 290
And where it comes this courier fleet
Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,
As if to-morrow should redeem
The vanished rose of evening's dream.
By houses lies a fresher green,
On men and maids a ruddier mien,
As if time brought a new relay
Of shining virgins every May,
MAY-DAY 181
And Summer came to ripen maids
To a beauty that not fades. 300
The ground-pines wash their rusty green,
The maple-tops their crimson tint,
On the soft path each track is seen,
The girl's foot leaves its neater print.
The pebble loosened from the frost
Asks of the urchin to be tost.
In flint and marble beats a heart,
The kind Earth takes her children's part,
The green lane is the school-boy's friend,
Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, 310
The fresh ground loves his top and ball,
The air rings jocund to his call,
The brimming brook invites a leap,
He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.
The youth reads omens where he goes,
And speaks all languages the rose.
The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise
The far halloo of human voice ;
The perfumed berry on the spray
Smacks of faint memories far away. 320
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings,
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,
Stepping daily onward north
To greet staid ancient cavaliers
Filing single in stately train.
182 MAY-DAY
And who, and who are the travellers ?
They were Night and Day, and Day and Night,
Pilgrims wight with step forthright. 331
I saw the Days deformed and low,
Short and bent by cold and snow ;
The merry Spring threw wreaths on them,
Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell ;
Many a flower and many a gem,
They were refreshed by the smell,
They shook the snow from hate and shoon,
They put their April raiment on ;
And those eternal forms, 340
Unhurt by a thousand storms,
Shot up to the height of the sky again,
And danced as merrily as young men.
I saw them mask their awful glance
Sidewise meek in gossamer lids ;
And to speak my thought if none forbids
It was as if the eternal gods,
Tired of their starry periods,
Hid their majesty in cloth
Woven of tulips and painted moth. 350
On carpets green the maskers march
Below May's well-appointed arch,
Each star, each god, each grace amain,
Every joy and virtue speed,
Marching duly in her train,
And fainting Nature at her need
Is made whole again.
Twas the vintage-day of field and wood,
When magic wine for bards is brewed ;
MAY-DAY 183
Every tree and stem and chink 360
Gushed with syrup to the brink.
The air stole into the streets of towns,
And betrayed the fund of joy
To the high-school and medalled boy :
On from hall to chamber ran,
From youth to maid, from boy to man,
To babes, and to old eyes as well.
* Once more/ the old man cried, ' ye clouds,
Airy turrets purple-piled,
Which once my infancy beguiled, 370
Beguile me with the wonted spell,
I know ye skilful to convoy
The total freight of hope and joy
Into rude and homely nooks,
Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books,
On farmer's byre, on meadow -pipes,
Or on a pool of dancing chips.
I care not if the pomps you show
Be what they soothfast appear,
Or if yon realms in sunset glow 380
Be bubbles of the atmosphere.
And if it be to you allowed
To fool me with a shining cloud,
So only new griefs are consoled
By new delights, as old by old,
Frankly I will be your guest,
Count your change and cheer the best.
The world hath overmuch of pain,—
If Nature give me joy again,
Of such deceit I'll not complain.* 390
184 MAY-DAY
Ah ! well I mind the calendar,
Faithful through a thousand years,
Of the painted race of flowers,
Exact to days, exact to hours,
Counted on the spacious dial
Yon broidered zodiac girds.
I know the pretty almanac
Of the punctual coming-back,
On their due days, of the birds.
I marked them yestermorn, 40°
A flock of finches darting
Beneath the crystal arch,
Piping, as they flew, a march, —
Belike the one they used in parting
Last year from yon oak or larch ;
Dusky sparrows in a crowd,
Diving, darting northward free,
Suddenly betook them all,
Every one to his hole in the wall,
Or to his niche in the apple-tree. 410
I greet with joy the choral trains
Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes.
Best gems of Nature's cabinet,
With dews of tropic morning wet,
Beloved of children, bards, and Spring,
0 birds, your perfect virtues bring,
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart's delight,
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof,
Here weave your chamber weather-proof,
Forgive our harms, and condescend 4*1
To man, as to a lubber friend,
MAY-DAY 185
And, generous, teach his awkward race
Courage, and probity, and grace !
Poets praise that hidden wine
Hid in milk we drew
At the barrier of Time,
When our life was new.
We had eaten fairy fruit,
We were quick from head to foot, 430
All the forms we look on shone
As with diamond dews thereon.
What cared we for costly joys,
The Museum's far-fetched toys ?
Gleam of sunshine on the wall
Poured a deeper cheer than all
The revels of the Carnival.
We a pine-grove did prefer
To a marble theatre,
Could with gods on mallows dine, 440
Nor cared for spices or for wine.
Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned,
Arch on arch, the grimmest land ;
Whistle of a woodland bird
Made the pulses dance,
Note of horn in valleys heard
Filled the region with romance.
None can tell how sweet,
How virtuous, the morning air ;
Every accent vibrates well ; 450
Not alone the wood-bird's call,
Or shouting boys that chase their ball,
Pass the height of minstrel skill,
186 MAY-DAY
But the ploughman's thoughtless cry,
Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat,
And the joiner's hammer-beat,
Softened are above their will.
All grating discords melt,
No dissonant note is dealt,
And though thy voice be shrill 460
Like rasping file on steel,
Such is the temper of the air,
Echo waits with art and care,
And will the faults of song repair.
So by remote Superior Lake,
And by resounding Mackinac,
When northern storms the forest shake,
And billows on the long beach break,
The artful Air doth separate
Note by note all sounds that grate, 470
Smothering in her ample breast
All but godlike words,
Reporting to the happy ear
Only purified accords.
Strangely wrought from barking waves,
Soft music daunts the Indian braves, —
Convent-chanting which the child
Hears pealing from the panther's cavo
And the impenetrable wild.
One musician is sure, 480
His wisdom will not fail,
He has not tasted wine impure,
Nor bent to passion frail.
Age cannot cloud his memory,
MAY-DAY 187
Nor grief untune his voice,
Ranging down the ruled scale
From tone of joy to inward wail,
Tempering the pitch of all
In his windy cave.
He all the fables knows, 490
And in their causes tells, —
Knows Nature's rarest moods,
Ever on her secret broods.
The Muse of men is coy,
Oft courted will not come ;
In palaces and market squares
Entreated, she is dumb ;
But my minstrel knows and tells
The counsel of the gods,
Knows of Holy Book the spells, 500
Knows the law of Night and Day,
And the heart of girl and boy,
The tragic and the gay,
And what is writ on Table Round
Of Arthur and his peers,
What sea and land discoursing say
In sidereal years.
He renders all his lore
In numbers wild as dreams,
Modulating all extremes, — 5:0
What the spangled meadow saith
To the children who have faith ;
Only to children children sing,
Only to youth will spring be spring.
Who is the Bard thus magnified ?
When did he sing ? and where abide ?
188 MAY-DAY
Chief of song where poets feast
Is the wind-harp which thou seest
In the casement at my side,
Aeolian harp, 520
How strangely wise thy strain !
Gay for youth, gay for youth,
(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)
In the hall at summer eve
Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.
From the eager opening strings
Rung loud and bold the song.
Who but loved the wind-harp's note ?
How should not the poet doat
On its mystic tongue, 530
With its primeval memory,
Reporting what old minstrels said
Of Merlin locked the harp within, —
Merlin paying the pain of sin,
Pent in a dungeon made of air, —
And some attain his voice to hear,
Words of pain and cries of fear,
But pillowed all on melody,
As fits the griefs of bards to be.
And what if that all-echoing shell, 540
Which thus the buried Past can tell,
Should rive the Future, and reveal
What his dread folds would fain conceal ?
It shares the secret of the earth,
And of the kinds that owe her birth.
Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
But of the Overgods alone :
MAY-DAY 189
It trembles to the cosmic breath, —
As it heareth, so it saith ;
Obeying meek the primal Cause, 550
It is the tongue of mundane laws.
And this, at least, I dare affirm,
Since genius too has bound and term,
There is no bard in all the choir,
Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
Or Shakespeare, whom no mind can measure,
Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
Scott, the delight of generous boys, 560
Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice, —
Not one of all can put in verse,
Or to this presence could rehearse,
The sights and voices ravishing
The boy knew on the hills in spring,
When pacing through the oaks he heard
Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
The heavy grouse's sudden whirr,
The rattle of the kingfisher ;
Saw bonfires of the harlot flies 570
In the lowland, when day dies ;
Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
The first far signal-fire of morn.
These syllables that Nature spoke,
And the thoughts that in him woke,
Can adequately utter none
Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
And best can teach its Delphian chord
How Nature to the soul is moored,
MAY-UAY
If once again that silent string, 580
As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.
Not long ago, at eventide,
It seemed, so listening, at my side
A window rose, and, to say sooth,
I looked forth on the fields of youth :
I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
Mates of my youth, — yet not my mates,
Stronger and bolder far thail I, 590
With grace, with genius, well attired,
And then as now from far admired,
Followed with love
They knew not of,
With passion cold and shy.
O joy, for what recoveries rare !
Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,
See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom, —
Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb !
Or teach thou, Spring ! the grand recoil
Of life resurgent from the soil 601
Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.
Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze !
So on thy broad mystic van
Lie the opal-coloured days,
And waft the miracle to man.
Soothsayer of the eldest gods,
Repairer of what harms betide,
Revealer of the inmost powers
Prometheus proffered, Jove denied ; 610
MAY-DAY 191
Disclosing treasures more than true,
Or in what far to-morrow due ;
Speaking by the tongues of flowers,
By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,
Singing by the oriole songs,
Heart of bird the man's heart seeking ;
Whispering hints of treasure hid
Under Morn's unlifted lid,
Islands looming just beyond
The dim horizon's utmost bound ; — 620
Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid,
Or taunt us with our hope decayed ?
Or who like thee persuade,
Making the splendour of the air,
The morn and sparkling dew, a snare ?
Or who resent
Thy genius, wiles, and blandishment ?
There is no orator prevails
To beckon or persuade
Like thee the youth or maid : 630
Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales,
Thy blooms, thy kinds,
Thy echoes in the wilderness,
Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress,
Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.
For thou, 0 Spring ! canst renovate
All that high God did first create.
Be still his arm and architect,
Rebuild the ruin, mend defect ;
192 MAY-DAY
Chemist to vamp old worlds with new, 640
Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,
New-tint the plumage of the birds,
And slough decay from grazing herds,
Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,
Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,
Purge alpine air by towns defiled,
Bring to fair mother fairer child,
Not less renew the heart and brain,
Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,
Make the aged eye sun-clear, 650
To parting soul bring grandeur near.
Under gentle types, my Spring
Masks the might of Nature's king,
An energy that searches thorough
From Chaos to the dawning morrow ;
Into all our human plight,
The soul's pilgrimage and flight ;
In city or in solitude,
Step by step, lifts bad to good,
Without halting, without rest, 660
Lifting Better up to Best ;
Planting seeds of knowledge pure,
Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.
193
THE ADIRONDACS
A JOURNAL
DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858
Wise and polite, — and if I drew
Their several portraits, you would own
Chaucer had no such worthy crew,
Nor Boccace in Decameron.
WE crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,
Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks
Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach
The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach
We chose our boats ; each man a boat and guide, —
Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.
Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,
With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,
Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,
Tahawus, Seaward, Maclntyre, Baldhead, 10
And other Titans without muse or name.
Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,
Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills,
And made our distance wider, boat from boat,
As each would hear the oracle alone.
By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid
Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,
Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,
Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,
Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,
On through the Upper Saranac, and up 21
EMERSON O
194 . THE ADIRONDACS
P6re Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass
Winding through grassy shallows in and out,
Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,
To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons.
Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,
Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge
Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.
A pause and council : then, where near the head
On the east a bay makes inward to the land 30
Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,
And in the twilight of the forest noon
Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.
We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,
Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,
Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire.
The wood was sovran with centennial trees, —
Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,
Linden and spruce. In strict society
Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine,
Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew
thereby. 41
Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,
The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.
' Welcome ! ' the wood god murmured through the
leaves, —
' Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to
me.'
Evening drew on ; stars peeped through maple-
boughs,
THE ADIRONDACS 195
Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.
Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,
Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.
Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft 50
In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,
Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
And greet unanimous the joyful change.
So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,
Though late returning to her pristine ways.
Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold ;
And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,
Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
That circled freshly in their forest dress 60
Made them to boys again. Happier that they
Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs.
No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,
No door-bell heralded a visitor,
No courier waits, no letter came or went,
Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or
sold ;
The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
The falling rain will spoil no holiday.
We were made freemen of the forest laws, 70
All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
Essaying nothing she cannot perform.
In Adirondac lakes,
At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded :
Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make
02
196 THE ADIRONDACS
His brief toilette : at night, or in the rain,
He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn :
A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,
And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. 79
By turns we praised the stature of our guides,
Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill
To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,
To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs
Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down :
Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,
And wit to trap or take him in his lair.
Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,
In winter, lumberers ; in summer, guides ;
Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired
Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.
Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen !
No city airs or arts pass current here. 92
Your rank is all reversed : let men of cloth
Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls :
They are the doctors of the wilderness,
And we the low-prized laymen.
In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
Which few can put on with impunity.
What make you, master, fumbling at the oar ?
Will you catch crabs ? Truth tries pretension here.
The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb ;
The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks
He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, 103
Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,
Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
To thread by night the nearest way to camp ?
THE ADIRONDACS 197
Ask you, how went the hours ?
All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,
North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,
Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout ; m
Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon ;
Challenging Echo by our guns and cries ;
Or listening to the laughter of the loon ;
Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,
Beholding the procession of the pines ;
Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,
In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter
Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds
Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. 120
Hark to that muffled roar ! a tree in the woods
Is fallen : but hush ! it has not scared the buck
Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
Then turns to bound away, — is it too late ?
Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark,
Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five ;
Sometimes our wits at sally and retort,
With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle ;
Or parties scaled the near acclivities
Competing seekers of a rumoured lake, 130
Whose unauthenticated waves we named
Lake Probability, — our carbuncle,
Long sought, not found.
Two Doctors in the camp
Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain,
Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,
198 THE ADIRONDACS
Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth ;
Insatiate skill in water or in air
Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss ;
The while, one leaden pot of alcohol
Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. 140
Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,
Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus,
Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride,
Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss,
Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.
Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,
The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker
Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.
As water poured through the hollows of the hills
To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, 150
So Nature shed all beauty lavishly
From her redundant horn.
Lords of this realm,
Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
Rounded by hours where each outdid the last
In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,
As if associates of the sylvan gods.
We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,
So pure the Alpine element we breathed,
So light, so lofty pictures came and went.
We trode on air, contemned the distant town, 160
Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned
That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge,
And how we should come hither with our sons,
Hereafter, — willing they, and more adroit.
THE ADIRONDACK 199
Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery, —
The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito
Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands :
But, on the second day, we heed them not,
Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,
Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.
For who defends our leafy tabernacle 171
From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd, —
Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly,
Which past endurance sting the tender cit,
But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn ?
Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters' pans,
Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave
Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread ;
All ate like abbots, and, if any missed 180
Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss
With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth.
And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore,
Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Aeneas, said aloud,
' Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating
Food indigestible ' : — then murmured some,
Others applauded him who spoke the truth.
Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought
Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday
'Mid all the hints and glories of the home. 190
For who can tell what sudden privacies
Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry
Of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let
Into this Oreads' fended Paradise,
200 THE ADIRONDACS
As chapels in the city's thoroughfares,
Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow,
And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.
Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke
To each apart, lifting her lovely shows
To spiritual lessons pointed home. 200
And as through dreams in watches of the night,
So through all creatures in their form and ways
Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,
Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense
Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.
Hark to that petulant chirp ! what ails the warbler ?
Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.
Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,
Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,
Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky ? 210
And presently the sky is changed ; 0 world I
What pictures and what harmonies are thine I
The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
So like the soul of me, what if 't were me ?
A melancholy better than all mirth.
Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,
Or at the foresight of obscurer years ?
Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory,
Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
Superior to all its gaudy skirts. 220
And, that no day of life may lack romance,
The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down
A private beam into each several heart.
Daily the bending skies solicit man,
The seasons chariot him from this exile,
THE ADIRONDACS 201
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.
With a vermilion pencil mark the day 230
When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs
Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls
Of Loud Bog River, suddenly confront
Two of our mates returning with swift oars.
One held a printed journal waving high
Caught from a late-arriving traveller,
Big with great news, and shouted the report
For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,
And landed on our coast, and pulsating 240
With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries
From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,
Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path
Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,
Match God's equator with a zone of art,
And lift man's public action to a height
Worthy the enormous clouds of witnesses,
When linked hemispheres attest his deed.
We have few moments in the longest life
Of such delight and wonder as there grew, — 250
Nor yet unsuited to that solitude :
A burst of joy, as if we told the fact
To ears intelligent ; as if grey rock
And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know
This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind ;
As if we men were talking in a vein
202 THE ADIRONDACS
Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,
And a prime end of the most subtle element
Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves !
Bend nearer, faint day-moon ! Yon thundertops,
Let them hear well ! *t is theirs as much as ours.
A spasm throbbing through the pedestals 262
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,
Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill
To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.
The lightning has run masterless too long ;
He must to school, and learn his verb and noun,
And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,
Spelling with guided tongue man's messages
Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.
And yet I marked, even in the manly joy 271
Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat,
(Perchance I erred,) a shade of discontent ;
Or was it for mankind a generous shame,
As of a luck not quite legitimate,
Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part ?
Was it a college pique of town and gown,
As one within whose memory it burned
That not academicians, but some lout,
Found ten years since the Calif ornian gold ? 280
And now, again, a hungry company
Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,
Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools
Of science, not from the philosophers,
Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
'T was always thus, and will be ; hand and head
Are ever rivals : but, though this be swift,
THE ADIRONDACS 203
The other slow, — this the Prometheus,
And that the Jove, — yet, howsoever hid,
It was from Jove the other stole his fire, 290
And, without Jove, the good had never been.
It is not Iroquois or cannibals,
But ever the free race with front sublime,
And these instructed by their wisest too,
Who do the feat, and lift humanity.
Let not him mourn who best entitled was,
Nay, mourn not one : let him exult,
Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,
And water it with wine, nor watch askance
Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit : 300
Enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed.
We flee away from cities, but we bring
The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,
Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
We praise the guide, we praise the forest life ;
But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore
Of books and arts and trained experiment,
Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz ?
0 no, not we ! Witness the shout that shook
Wild Tapper Lake ; witness the mute all-hail
The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge
Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears 312
From a log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes
On the piano, played with master's hand.
' Well done ! ' he cries ; ' the bear is kept at bay,
The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire ;
All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,
This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,
204 THE APIRONDACS
This wild plantation will suffice to chase.
Now speed the gay celerities of art, 320
What in the desert was impossible
Within four walls is possible again, —
Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,
Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife
Of keen competing youths, joined or alone
To outdo each other, and extort applause.
Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.
Twirl the old wheels ! Time takes fresh start again,
On for a thousand years of genius more.'
The holidays were fruitful, but must end ; 330
One August evening had a cooler breath ;
Into each mind intruding duties crept ;
Under the cinders burned the fires of home ;
Nay, letters found us in our paradise ;
So in the gladness of the new event
We struck our camp, and left the happy hills.
The fortunate star that rose on us sank not ;
The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,
The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,
And Nature, the inscrutable and mute, 340
Permitted on her infinite repose
Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,
As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.
OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
PIECES
BRAHMA
IF the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near ;
Shadow and sunlight are the same ;
The vanquished gods to me appear ;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out ;
When me they fly, I am the wings ; 10
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for ray abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven ;
But thou, meek lover of the good !
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
206
NEMESIS
ALREADY blushes in thy cheek
The bosom-thought which thou must speak ;
The bird, how far it haply roam
By cloud or isle, is flying home ;
The maiden fears, and fearing runs
Into the charmed snare she shuns ;
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is never wide.
Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth ?
Or prayers the stony Parcae soothe, 10
Or coax the thunder from its mark ?
Or tapers light the chaos dark ?
In spite of Virtue and the Muse,
Nemesis will have her dues,
And all our struggles and our toils
Tighter wind the giant coils.
207
PATE
DEEP in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes mean or great :
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell's measure or degree ;
Unknown to him, as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse.
He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,
With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harboured not his peer : 10
Obeying Time, the last to own
The Genius from its cloudy throne.
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified ;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.
208
FREEDOM
ONCE I wished I might rehearse
Freedom's paean in my verse,
That the slave who caught the strain
Should throb until he snapped his chain.
But the Spirit said, * Not so ;
Speak it not, or speak it low ;
Name not lightly to be said,
Gift too precious to be prayed,
Passion not to be expressed
But by heaving of the breast :
Yet, — wouldst thou the mountain find
Where this deity is shrined,
Who gives to seas and sunset skies
Their unspent beauty of surprise,
And, when it lists him, waken can
Brute or savage into man ;
Or, if in thy heart he shine,
Blends the starry fates with thine,
Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee,
And makes thy thoughts archangels be ;
Freedom's secret wilt thou know ? —
Counsel not with flesh and blood ;
Loiter not for cloak or food ;
Right thou feelest, rush to do/
209
ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL
CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857
O TENDERLY the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire ;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire.
The cannon booms from town to town,
Our pulses are not less,
The joy-bells chime their tidings down,
Which children's voices bless.
For He that flung the broad blue fold
O'er-mantling land and sea, 10
One third part of the sky unrolled
For the banner of the free.
The men are ripe of Saxon kind
To build an equal state, —
To take the statute from the mind,
And make of duty fate.
United States ! the ages plead, —
Present and Past in under-song, —
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue. 20
For sea and land don't understand,
Nor skies without a frown
See rights for which the one hand fights
By the other cloven down.
EMERSON P
210 ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL
Be just at home ; then write your scroll
Of honour o'er the sea,
And bid the broad Atlantic roll,
A ferry of the free.
And, henceforth, there shall be no chain,
Save underneath the sea 30
The wires shall murmur through the main
Sweet songs of LIBERTY.
The conscious stars accord above,
The waters wild below,
And under, through the cable wove,
Her fiery errands go.
For He that worketh high and wise,
Nor pauses in his plan,
Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man. 40
211
BOSTON HYMN
READ IN Music HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863
THE word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came
As they sat by the seaside,
And filled their hearts with flame.
God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more ;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.
Think ye I made this ball
A field of havoc and war, to
Where tyrants great and tyrants small
Might harry the weak and poor ?
My angel, — his name is Freedom, —
Choose him to be your king ;
He shall cut pathways east and west,
And fend you with his wing.
Lo ! I uncover the land
Which I hid of old time in the West,
As the sculptor uncovers the statue
When he has wrought his best ; 20
I show Columbia, of the rocks
Which dip their foot in the seas,
And soar to the air-borne flocks
Of clouds, and the boreal fleece,
p 2
212 BOSTON HYMN
I will divide my goods ;
Call in the wretch and slave :
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
I will have never a noble,
No lineage counted great ; 30
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
Shall constitute a state.
Go, cut down trees in the forest,
And trim the straightest boughs ;
Cut down trees in the forest,
And build me a wooden house.
Call the people together,
The young men and the sires,
The digger in the harvest field,
Hireling, and him that hires ; 40
And here in a pine state-house
They shall choose men to rule
In every needful faculty,
In church, and state, and school.
Lo, now ! if these poor men
Can govern the land and sea,
And make just laws below the sun,
As planets faithful be.
And ye shall succour men ;
'T is nobleness to serve ; 50
Help them who cannot help again :
Beware from right to swerve.
BOSTON HYMN 213
I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave :
Free be his heart and hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.
I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow :
As much as he is and doeth,
So much he shall bestow. 60
But laying hands on another
To coin his labour and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt.
To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound ;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound !
Pay ransom to the owner,
And fill the bag to the brim. 70
Who is the owner ? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
0 North 1 give him beauty for rags,
And honour, 0 South ! for his shame ;
Nevada ! coin thy golden crags
With Freedom's image and name
Up ! and the dusky race
That sat in darkness long, —
Be swift their feet as antelopes,
And as behemoth strong. 80
214 BOSTON HYMN
Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snow-flakes,
And carry my purpose forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.
My will fulfilled shall be,
For, in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark. 88
215
VOLUNTARIES
I
Low and mournful be the strain,
Haughty thought be far from me ;
Tones of penitence and pain,
Moanings of the tropic sea ;
Low and tender in the cell
Where a captive sits in chains,
Crooning ditties treasured well
From his Afric's torrid plains.
Sole estate his sire bequeathed —
Hapless sire to hapless son — 10
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.
What his fault, or what his crime ?
Or what ill planet crossed his prime ?
Heart too soft and will too weak
To front the fate that crouches near, —
Dove beneath the vulture's beak ; —
Will song dissuade the thirsty spear ?
Dragged from his mother's arms and breast,
Displaced, disfurnished here, 20
His wistful toil to do his best
Chilled by a ribald jeer.
Great men in the Senate sate,
Sage and hero, side by side,
Building for their sons the State,
216 VOLUNTARIES
Which they shall rule with pride.
They forbore to break the chain
Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owners' fierce disdain,
Lured by * Union ' as the bribe. 3°
Destiny sat by, and said,
* Pang for pang your seed shall pay,
Hide in false peace your coward head,
I bring round the harvest-day/
II
FREEDOM all winged expands,
Nor perches in a narrow place ;
Her broad van seeks unplanted lands ;
She loves a poor and virtuous race.
Clinging to a colder zone
Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down, 40
The snow-flake is her banner's star,
Her stripes the boreal streamers are.
Long she loved the Northman well :
Now the iron age is done,
She will not refuse to dwell
With the offspring of the Sun ;
Foundling of the desert far,
Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,
He roves unhurt the burning ways
In climates of the summer star. 50
He has avenues to God
Hid from men of Northern brain,
Far beholding, without cloud,
What these with slowest steps attain.
VOLUNTARIES 217
If once the generous chief arrive
To lead him willing to be led,
For freedom he will strike and strive,
And drain his heart till he be dead.
Ill
IN an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right, 60
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,—
Break sharply off their jolly games
Forsake their comrades gay,
And quit proud homes and youthful dames,
For famine, toil, and fray ?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease. 70
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, 7 can.
IV
0, WELL for the fortunate soul
Which Music's wings infold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old !
Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtile thought, 80
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought.
218 VOLUNTARIES
But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Feeling only the fiery thread
Leading over heroic ground,
Walled with mortal terror round, 90
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this, — and knows no more, —
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before, —
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified, 100
Victor over death and pain ;
Forever : but his erring foe,
Self -assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm
Redress the eternal scales.
He, the poor foe, whom angels foil,
Blind with pride, and fooled by hate,
Writhes within the dragon coil,
Reserved to a speechless fate. no
VOLUNTARIES 219
V
BLOOMS the laurel which belongs
To the valiant chief who fights ;
I see the wreath, I hear the songs
Lauding the Eternal Rights,
Victors over daily wrongs :
Awful victors, they misguide
Whom they will destroy,
And their coming triumph hide
In our downfall, or our joy :
They reach no term, they never sleep, 120
In equal strength through space abide ;
Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,
The strong they slay, the swift outstride :
Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods,
And rankly on the castled steep, —
Speak it firmly, these are gods,
All are ghosts beside.
220
LOVE AND THOUGHT
Two well-assorted travellers use
The highway, Eros and the Muse.
From the twins is nothing hidden,
To the pair is naught forbidden ;
Hand in hand the comrades go
Every nook of nature through :
Each for other they were born,
Each can other best adorn ;
They know one only mortal grief
Past all balsam or relief, 10
When, by false companions crossed,
The pilgrims have each other lost.
221
LOVER'S PETITION
GOOD Heart, that ownest all !
I ask a modest boon and small :
Not of lands and towns the gift, —
Too large a load for me to lift, —
But for one proper creature,
Which geographic eye,
Sweeping the map of Western earth,
Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine
To Powhatan's domain,
Could not descry. 10
Is 't much to ask in ail thy huge creation,
So trivial a part, —
A solitary heart ?
Yet count me not of spirit mean,
Or mine a mean demand,
For 't is the concentration
And worth of all the land,
The sister of the sea,
The daughter of the strand,
Composed of air and light, 20
And of the swart earth-might.
So little to thy poet's prayer
Thy large bounty well can spare.
And yet I think, if she were gone,
The world were better left alone.
222
UNA
ROVING, roving, as it seems,
Una lights my clouded dreams ;
Still for journeys she is dressed ;
We wander far by east and west.
In the homestead, homely thought ;
At my work I ramble not ;
If from home chance draw me wide,
Half-seen Una sits beside.
In my house and garden-plot,
Though beloved, I miss her not ; 10
But one I seek in foreign places,
One face explore in foreign faces.
At home a deeper thought may light
The inward sky with chrysolite,
And I greet from far the ray,
Aurora of a dearer day.
But if upon the seas I sail,
Or trundle on the glowing rail,
I am but a thought of hers,
Loveliest of travellers. 20
So the gentle poet's name
To foreign parts is blown by fame ;
Seek him in his native town,
He is hidden and unknown.
223
LETTERS-
EVEEY day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word ;
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear.
224
RUBIES
THEY brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun ;
I said, they are drops of frozen wine
From Eden's vats that run.
I looked again, — I thought them hearts
Of friends to friends unknown ;
Tides that should warm each neighbouring life
Are locked in sparkling stone.
But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice, 10
And give love's scarlet tides to flow, —
When shall that sun arise ?
225
MERLIN'S SONG
OF Merlin wise I learned a song, —
Sing it low, or sing it loud,
It is mightier than the strong,
And punishes the proud.
I sing it to the surging crowd, —
Good men it will calm and cheer,
Bad men it will chain and cage.
In the heart of the music peals a strain
Which only angels hear ;
Whether it waken joy or rage,
Hushed myriads hark in vain,
Yet they who hear it shed their age,
And take their youth again.
iMEESON Q
226
THE TEST
(Musa loquitur.)
I HUNG my verses in the wind,
Time and tide their faults may find.
All were winnowed through and through,
Five lines lasted sound and true ;
Five were smelted in a pot
Than the South more fierce and hot ;
These the siroc could not melt,
Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
And the meaning was more white
Than July's meridian light. 10
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets knowe
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five hundred did survive ?
227
SOLUTION
I AM the Muse who sung alway
By Jove, at dawn of the first day.
Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought
To fire the stagnant earth with thought :
On spawning slime my song prevails,
Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales ;
Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn,
Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born;
Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race,
And Nile substructs her granite base, — i
Tented Tartary, columned Nile, —
And, under vines, on rocky isle,
Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak,
Forward stepped the perfect Greek :
That wit and joy might find a tongue,
And earth grow civil, HOMER sung.
Flown to Italy from Greece,
I brooded long, and held my peace,
For I am wont to sing uncalled,
And in days of evil plight j
Unlock doors of new delight ;
And sometimes mankind I appalled
With a bitter horoscope,
With spasms of terror for balm of hope.
Then by better thought I lead
Bards to speak what nations need ;
So I folded me in fears,
And DANTE searched the triple spheres,
Q2
228 SOLUTION
Moulding nature at his will,
So shaped, so coloured, swift or still, 30
And, sculptor-like, his large design
Etched on Alp and Apennine.
Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,
Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power,
England's genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before :
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of SHAKESPEARE'S wit. 40
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.
Far in the North, where polar night
Holds in check the frolic light,
In trance upborne past mortal goal
The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul.
Through snows above, mines underground,
The inks of Erebus he found ;
Rehearsed to men the damned wails
On which the seraph music sails. 50
In spirit- worlds he trod alone,
But walked the earth unmarked, unknown.
The near by-stander caught no sound, —
Yet they who listened far aloof
Heard rendings of the skyey roof,
And felt, beneath, the quaking ground ;
And his air-sown, unheeded words,
In the next age, are flaming swords.
SOLUTION 229
In newer days of war and trade,
Romance forgot, and faith decayed, 60
When Science armed and guided war,
And clerks the Janus-gates unbar,
When France, where poet nevei grew,
Halved and dealt the globe anew,
GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife,
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life,
And brought Olympian wisdom down
To court and mart, to gown and town ;
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
The open secret of to-day. 70
So bloom the unfading petals five,
And verses that all verse outlive.
NATURE AND LIFE
NATURE
I
WINTERS know
Easily to shed the snow,
And the untaught Spring is wise
In cowslips and anemones.
Nature, hating art and pains,
Baulks and baffles plotting brains ;
Casualty and Surprise
Are the apples of her eyes ;
But she dearly loves the poor,
And, by marvel of her own,
Strikes the loud pretender down.
For Nature listens in the rose,
And hearkens in the berry's bell,
To help her friends, to plague her foes,
And like wise God she judges well.
Yet doth much her love excel
To the souls that never fell,
To swains that live in happiness,
And do well because they please,
Who walk in ways that are unfamed,
And feats achieve before they're named.
231
NATURE
II
SHE is gamesome and good,
But of mutable mood, —
No dreary repeater now and again,
She will be all things to all men.
She who is old, but nowise feeble,
Pours her power into the people,
Merry and manifold without bar,
Makes and moulds them what they are,
And what they call their city way
Is not their way, but hers, 10
And what they say they made to-day,
They learned of the oaks and firs,
She spawneth men as mallows fresh,
Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh ;
She drugs her water and her wheat
With the flavours she finds meet,
And gives them what to drink and eat ;
And having thus their bread and growth,
They do her bidding, nothing loath.
What 's most theirs is not their own, 20
But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone,
And in their vaunted works of Art
The master-stroke is still her part.
232
THE ROMANY GIRL
THE sun goes down, and with him takes
The coarseness of my poor attire ;
The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.
Pale Northern girls ! you scorn our race ;
You captives of your air-tight halls,
Wear out in-doors your sickly days,
But leave us the horizon walls.
And if I take you, dames, to task,
And say it frankly without guile, 10
Then you are Gypsies in a mask,
And I the lady all the while.
If, on the heath, below the moon,
I court and play with paler blood,
Me false to mine dare whisper none, —
One sallow horseman knows me good.
Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
For teeth and hair with shopmen deal ;
My swarthy tint is in 'the grain,
The rocks and forest know it real. 20
The wild air bloweth in our lungs,
The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,
The birds gave us our wily tongues,
The panther in our dances flies.
THE ROMANY GIKL 233
You doubt we read the stars on high,
Nathless we read your fortunes true ;
The stars may hide in the upper sky,
But without glass we fathom you.
234
DAYS
DAMSELS of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and faggots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 10
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
235
THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT
DAY ! hast thou two faces,
Making one place two places ?
One, by humble farmer seen,
Chill and wet, unlighted, mean,
Useful only, triste and damp,
Serving for a labourer's lamp ?
Have the same mists another side,
To be the appanage of pride,
Gracing the rich man's wood and lake,
His park where amber mornings break 10
And treacherously bright to show
His planted isle where roses glow ?
0 Day ! and is your mightiness
A sycophant to smug success ?
Will the sweet sky and ocean broad
Be fine accomplices to fraud ?
0 Sun ! I curse thy cruel ray :
Back, back to chaos, harlot Day ! 18
236
MY GARDEN
IF I could put my woods in song,
And tell what 's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.
In my plot no tulips blow, —
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead ;
And rank the savage maples grow
From spring's faint flush to autumn red.
My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound ; 10
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.
Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one ;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.
The sowers made haste to depart, —
The wind and the birds which sowed it ;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it. 20
Waters that wash my garden side
Play not in Nature's lawful web,
They heed not moon or solar tide, —
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.
MY GARDEN 237
Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god, — none did refuse ;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.
Keen ears can catch a syllable,
As if one spake to another, 30
In the hemlocks tail, untamable,
And what the whispering grasses smother.
Aeolian harps in the pine
Ring with the song of the Fates ;
Infant Bacchus in the vine, —
Far distant yet his chorus waits.
Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the wood-belFs peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning's prime,
Or match with words that tender sky ? 40
Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone ;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.
Ever the words of the gods resound ;
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.
Wandering voices in the air,
And murmurs in the wold, 50
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.
238 MY GARDEN
When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.
But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn ;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn. 60
These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day ;
If who can read them comes at last,
He will spell in the sculpture, ' Stay ! '
239
THE TITMOUSE
You shall not be oversold
When you deal with arctic cold,
As late I found my lukewarm blood
Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood.
How should I fight ? my foeman fine
Has million arms to one of mine :
East, west, for aid I looked in vain,
East, west, north, south, are his domain.
Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home ;
Must borrow his winds who there would come.
Up and away for life ! be fleet ! — n
The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence.
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,
The punctual stars will vigil keep,
Embalmed by purifying cold,
The winds shall sing their dead-march old, 20
The snow is no ignoble shroud,
The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.
Softly, — but this way fate was pointing,
'T was coming fast to such anointing,
When piped a tiny voice hard by,
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
240 THE TITMOUSE
Chic-chicadeedee ! saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said, ' Good day, good sir !
Fine afternoon, old passenger ! 30
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces/
This poet, though he live apart,
Moved by his hospitable heart,
Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,
To do the honours of his court,
As fits a feathered lord of land ;
Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,
Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,
Prints his small impress on the snow, 40
Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
Head downward, clinging to the spray.
Here was th!s atom in full breath,
Hurling defiance at vast death ;
This scrap of valour just for play
Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat grey,
As if to shame my weak behaviour ;
I greeted loud my little saviour,
* You pet ! what dost here ? and what for ?
In these woods, thy small Labrador, 50
At this pinch, wee San Salvador !
What fire burns in that little chest
So frolic, stout, and self-possest ?
Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine ;
Ashes and jet all hues outshine.
Why are not diamonds black and grey,
To ape thy dare-devil array ?
THE TITMOUSE 241
And I affirm, the spacious North
Exists to draw thy virtue forth.
I think no virtue goes with size ; 60
The reason of all cowardice
Is, that men are overgrown,
And, to be valiant, must come down
To the titmouse dimension.'
'T is good-will makes intelligence,
And I began to catch the sense
Of my bird's song : ' Live out of doors,
In the great woods, on prairie floors.
I dine in the sun ; when he sinks in the sea,
I too have a hole in a hollow tree ; 70
And I like less when Summer beats
With stifling beams on these retreats,
Than noontide twilights which snow makes
With tempest of the blinding flakes.
For well the soul, if stout within,
Can arm impregnably the skin ;
And polar frost my frame defied,
Made of the air that blows outside/
With glad remembrance of my debt,
I homeward turn ; farewell, my pet ! 80
When here again thy pilgrim comes,
He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs.
Doubt not, so long as earth has bread,
Thou first and foremost shalt be fed ;
The Providence that is most large
Takes hearts like thine in special charge,
Helps who for their own need are strong,
And the sky dotes on cheerful song.
KHERSON B
242 THE TITMOUSE
Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant
O'er all that mass and minster vaunt ; 90
For men mis-hear thy call in spring,
As 't would accost some frivolous wing,
Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be!
And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee /
I think old Caesar must have heard
In northern Gaul my dauntless bird,
And, echoed in some frosty wold,
Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold.
And I will write our annals new,
And thank thee for a better clew, 100
I, who dreamed not when I came here
To find the antidote of fear,
Now hear thee say in Roman key,
Paean ! Venit vidi, vici*
243
SEA-SHORE
I HEARD or seemed to hear the chiding Sea
Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come ?
Am I not always here, thy summer home ?
Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve ?
My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,
My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath ?
Was ever building like my terraces ?
Was ever couch magnificent as mine ?
lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn
A little hut suffices like a town. 10
I make your sculptured architecture vain,
Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,
And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.
Lo ! here is Rome, and Nineveh, and Thebes,
Karnak, and Pyramid, and Giant's Stairs,
Half piled or prostrate ; and my newest slab
Older than all thy race.
Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July ; 20
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men ;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.
R2
244 SEA-SHOEE
Rich are the sea-gods : — who gives gifts but they ?
They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls :
They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.
For every wave is wealth to Daedalus, 30
Wealth to the cunning artist who can work
This matchless strength. Where shall he find,
0 waves !
A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift ?
I with my hammer pounding evermore
The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust,
Strewing my bed, and, in another age,
Rebuild a continent of better men.
Then I unbar the doors : my paths lead out
The exodus of nations : I disperse
Men to all shores that front the hoary main. 40
I too have arts and sorceries ;
Illusion dwells forever with the wave.
I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal
With credulous and imaginative man ;
For, though he scoop my water in his palm,
A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.
Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,
I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,
To distant men, who must go there, or die. 49
245
SONG OF NATURE
MINE are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.
I hide in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.
No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still ;
And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.
And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell, 20
246 SONG OF NATURE
I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew ;
What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower, 30
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.
Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Of granite, marl, and shell.
But he, the man-child glorious, —
Where tarries he the while ?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile. 4°
My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.
Must time and tide for ever run ?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west ?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest ?
SONG OF NATURE 247
Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades, 50
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades ;
I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played ;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade ?
I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait ;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate. 60
Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.
One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.
I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule ; — 7°
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again ;
Seethe, Fate ! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.
248 SONG OF NATURE
Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days. 80
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
249
TWO RIVERS
THY summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain ;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain,
Thou in thy narrow banks are pent :
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament ;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the stream 10
Through years, through men, through nature fleet,
Through passion, thought, through power and dream.
Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay ;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where ho winds is the day of day.
So forth and brighter fares my stream, —
Who drink it shall not thirst again ;
No darkness stains its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain. 20
250
WALDEINSAMKEIT
I DO not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea ;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.
In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colours from the sky ;
Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
0 what have I to do with time ?
For this the day was made.
Cities of mortals woe- begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.
Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.
There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk in pain.
WALDEINSAMKEIT 251
Still on the seeds of all he made
The rose of beauty burns ;
Through times that wear, and forms that fade,
Immortal youth returns.
The black ducks mounting from the lake,
The pigeon in the pines, 30
The bittern's boom, a desert make
Which no false art refines.
Down in yon watery nook,
Where bearded mists divide,
The grey old gods whom Chaos knew,
The sires of Nature, hide.
Aloft, in secret veins of air,
Blows the sweet breath of song,
0, few to scale those uplands dare,
Though they to all belong ! 40
See thou bring not to field or stone
The fancies found in books ;
Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
To brave the landscape's looks.
And if, amid this dear delight,
My thoughts did home rebound,
I well might reckon it a slight
To the high cheer I found.
Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
Thy thrift, the sleep of cares ; 50
For a proud idleness like this
Crowns all thy mean affairs.
252
TERMINUS
IT is time to be old,
To take in sail : —
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said : * No more !
No farther spread
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs : no more invent,
Contract thy firmament 10
To compass of a tent.
There 's not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two ;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot ;
A little while
Still plan and smile, 20
And, fault of novel germs,
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath
The needful sinew stark as once,
The Baresark marrow to thy bones,
TERMINUS 253
But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, — 30
Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.'
As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime :
* Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unarmed ;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.' 40
254
THE PAST
THE debt is paid,
The verdict said,
The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed,
All fortunes made ;
Turn the key and bolt the door,
Sweet is death forevermore.
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
All is now secure and fast ;
Not the gods can shake the Past ;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can re-enter there, —
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.
255
THE LAST FAREWELL
LINES WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR'S BROTHER, EDWARD BLISS
EMERSON, WHILST SAILING OUT OF BOSTON HARBOUR, BOUND
FOR THE ISLAND OF PORTO Rico, IN 1832.
FAREWELL, ye lofty spires
That cheered the holy light !
Farewell, domestic fires
That broke the gloom of night !
Too soon those spires are lost,
Too fast we leave the bay,
Too soon by ocean tost
From hearth and home away,
Far away, far away.
Farewell the busy town, 10
The wealthy and the wise,
Kind smile and honest frown
From bright, familiar eyes.
All these are fading now ;
Our brig hastes on her way,
Her unremembering prow
Is leaping o'er the sea,
Far away, far away.
Farewell, my mother fond,
Too kind, too good to me ; 20
Nor pearl nor diamond
Would pay my debt to thee.
256 THE LAST FAREWELL
But even thy kiss denies
Upon my cheek to stay ;
The winged vessel flies,
And billows round her play,
Far away, far away.
Farewell, my brothers true,
My betters, yet my peers ;
How desert without you 30
My few and evil years !
But though aye one in heart,
Together sad or gay,
Rude ocean doth us part ;
We separate to-day,
Far away, far away.
Farewell I breathe again
To dim New England's shore ;
My heart shall beat not when
I pant for thee no more. 40
In yon green palmy isle,
Beneath the tropic ray,
I murmur never while
For thee and thine I pray ;
Far away, far away.
257
IN MEMORIAM
E. B. E.
I MOURN upon this battle-field,
But not for those who perished here.
Behold the river- bank
Whither the angry farmers came,
In sloven dress and broken rank,
Nor thought of fame.
Their deed of blood
All mankind praise ;
Even the serene Reason says,
It was well done. 10
The wise and simple have one glance
To greet yon stern head-stone,
Which more of pride than pity gave
To mark the Briton's friendless grave.
Yet it is a stately tomb ;
The grand return
Of eve and morn,
The year's fresh bloom,
The silver cloud,
Might grace the dust that is most proud.
Yet not of these I muse 21
In this ancestral place,
But of a kindred face
That never joy or hope shall here diffuse.
EMERSON S
258 IN MEMORIAM
Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star 1
What hast thou to do with these
Haunting this bank's historic trees ?
Thou born for noblest life,
For action's field, for victor's car,
Thou living champion of the right ? 30
To these their penalty belonged :
I grudge not these their bed of death,
But thine to thee, who never wronged
The poorest that drew breath.
All inborn power that could
Consist with homage to the good
Flamed from his martial eye ;
He who seemed a soldier born,
He should have the helmet worn,
All friends to fend, all foes defy, 40
Fronting foes of God and man,
Frowning down the evil-doer,
Battling for the weak and poor.
His from youth the leader's look
Gave the law which others took,
And never poor beseeching glance
Shamed that sculptured countenance.
There is no record left on earth,
Save in tablets of the heart,
Of the rich inherent worth, 5°
Of the grace that on him shone,
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit ;
He could not frame a word unfit,
An act unworthy to be done ;
IN MEMORIAM 259
Honour prompted every glance,
Honour came and sat beside him,
In lowly cot or painful road,
And evermore the cruel god
Cried, ' Onward ! ' and the palm-crown showed.
Born for success he seemed, 60
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes,
With budding power in college-halls,
As pledged in coming days to forge
Weapons to guard the State, or scourge
Tyrants despite their guards or walls.
On his young promise Beauty smiled,
Drew his free homage unbeguiled,
And prosperous Age held out his hand,
And richly his large future planned, 70
And troops of friends enjoyed the tide, —
All, all was given, and only health denied.
I see him with superior smile
Hunted by Sorrow's grisly train
In lands remote, in toil and pain,
With angel patience labour on,
With the high port he wore erewhile,
When, foremost of the youthful band,
The prizes in all lists he won ;
Nor bate one jot of heart or hope, 80
And, least of all, the loyal tie
Which holds to home 'neath every sky,
The joy and pride the pilgrim feels
In hearts which round the hearth at home
Keep pulse for pulse with those who roam.
S 2
260 IN MEMORIAM
What generous beliefs console
The brave whom Fate denies the goal !
If others reach it, is content ;
To Heaven's high will his will is bent.
Firm on his heart relied, 90
What lot soe'er betide,
Work of his hand
He nor repents nor grieves,
Pleads for itself the fact,
As unrepenting Nature leaves
Her every act.
Fell the bolt on the branching oak ;
The rainbow of his hope was broke ;
No craven cry, no secret tear, —
He told no pang, he knew no fear ; 100
Its peace sublime his aspect kept,
His purpose woke, his features slept ;
And yet between the spasms of pain
His genius beamed with joy again.
O'er thy rich dust the endless smile
Of Nature in thy Spanish isle
Hints never loss or cruel break
And sacrifice for love's dear sake,
Nor mourn the unalterable Days
That Genius goes and Folly stays. no
What matters how, or from what ground,
The freed soul its Creator found ?
Alike thy memory embalms
That orange-grove, that isle of palms,
And these loved banks, whose oak-boughs bold
Boot in the blood of heroes old.
ELEMENTS
EXPERIENCE
THE lords of life, the lords of life, —
I saw them pass,
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim, —
Use and Surprise,
Surface and Dream,
Succession swift and spectral Wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game 10
Omnipresent without name ; —
Some to see, some to be guessed,
They march from east to west :
Little man, least of all,
Among the legs of his guardians tall,
Walked about with puzzled look.
Him by the hand dear Nature took,
Dearest Nature, strong and kind,
Whispered, * Darling, never mind !
To-morrow they will wear another face, 20
The founder thou ; these are thy race ! '
262
COMPENSATION
THE wings of Time are black and white,
Pied with morning and with night.
Mountain tall and ocean deep
Trembling balance duly keep.
In changing moon and tidal wave
Glows the feud of Want and Have.
Gauge of more and less through space,
Electric star or pencil plays,
The lonely Earth amid the balls
That hurry through the eternal halls, 10
A makeweight flying to the void,
Supplemental asteroid,
Or compensatory spark,
Shoots across the neutral Dark,
II
Man 's the elm, and Wealth the vine ;
Staunch and strong the tendrils twine :
Though the frail ringlets thee deceive,
None from its stock that vine can reave.
Fear not, then, thou child infirm,
There 's no god dare wrong a worm ; 20
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts,
And power to him who power exerts.
COMPENSATION 263
Hast not thy share ? On winged feet,
Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ;
And all that Nature made thy own,
Floating in air oy pent in stone,
Will rive the hills and swim the sea,
And, like thy shadow, fellow thee. 28
264
POLITICS
GOLD and iron are good
To buy iron and gold ;
All earth's fleece and food
For their like are sold.
Hinted Merlin wise,
Proved Napoleon great,
Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft, and Avarice
Cannot rear a State. 10
Out of dust to build
What is more than dust, —
Walls Amphion piled
Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine
With the Virtues meet,
Find to their design
An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat, 20
Where the statesman ploughs
Furrow for the wheat, —
When the Church is social worth,
When the state-house is the hearth,
Then the perfect State is come,
The republican at home.
2Q5
HEROISM
RUBY wine is drunk by knaves,
Sugar spends to fatten slaves,
Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons ;
Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons,
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread,
Lightning-knotted round his head ;
The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats ;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-wings right for royal sails. 10
266
CHARACTER
THE sun set, but set not his hope :
Stars rose ; his faith was earlier up :
Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
Deeper and older seemed his eye ;
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
He spoke, and words more soft than rain
Brought the Age of Gold again :
His action won such reverence sweet
As hid all measure of the feat.
267
CULTURE
CAN rules or tutors educate
The semigod whom we await ?
He must be musical,
Tremulous, impressional,
Alive to gentle influence
Of landscape and of sky,
And tender to the spirit-touch
Of man's or maiden's eye :
But, to his native centre fast,
Shall into Future fuse the Past, 10
And the world's flowing fates in his own mould
recast.
268
FRIENDSHIP
A RUDDY drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled, —
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
0 friend, my bosom said, 10
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red ;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill -round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair ;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair. ao
269
BEAUTY
WAS never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone,
But hovered gleaming and was gone,
Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave ;
He flung in pebbles well to hear
The moment's music which they gave. 10
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone
From nodding pole and belting zone.
He heard a voice none else could hear
From centred and from errant sphere.
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime.
In dens of passion, and pits of woe,
He saw strong Eros struggling through,
To sun the dark and solve the curse,
And beam to the bounds of the universe. 20
While thus to love he gave his days
In loyal worship, scorning praise,
How spread their lures for him in vain
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain 1
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread*
270
MANNERS
GRACE, Beauty, and Caprice
Build this golden portal ;
Graceful women, chosen men,
Dazzle every mortal.
Their sweet and lofty countenance
His enchanted food ;
He need not go to them, their forms
Beset his solitude.
He looketh seldom in their face,
His eyes explore the ground, — 10
The green grass is a looking-glass
Whereon their traits are found.
Little and less he says to them,
So dances his heart in his breast ;
Their tranquil mien bereaveth him
Of wit, of words, of rest.
Too weak to win, too fond to shun
The tyrants of his doom,
The much deceived Endymion
Slips behind a tomb. 20
271
ART
GIVE to barrows, trays, and pans
Grace and glimmer of romance ;
Bring the moonlight into noon
Hid in gleaming piles of stone ;
On the city's paved street
Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet ;
Let spouting fountains cool the air,
Singing in the sun-baked square ;
Let statue, picture, park, and hall,
Ballad, flag, and festival, xo
The past restore, the day adorn,
And make to-morrow a new morn.
So shall the drudge in dusty frock
Spy behind the city clock
Retinues of airy kings,
Skirts of angels, starry wings,
His fathers shining in bright fables,
His children fed at heavenly tables.
'T is the privilege of Art
Thus to play its cheerful part, 20
Man on earth to acclimate,
And bend the exile to his fate,
And, moulded of one element
With the days and firmament,
Teach him on these as stairs to climb,
And live on even terms with Time ;
Whilst upper life the slender rill
Of human sense doth overfill, 28
272
SPIRITUAL LAWS
THE living Heaven thy prayers respect,
House at once and architect,
Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Builds therewith eternal towers ;
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil ;
Forging, through swart arms of Offence,
The silver seat of Innocence.
273
UNITY
SPACE is ample, east and west,
But two cannot go abreast,
Cannot travel in it two :
Yonder masterful cuckoo
Crowds every egg out of the nest,
Quick or dead, except its own ;
A spell is laid on sod and stone,
Night and day were tampered with,
Every quality and pith
Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour.
EMERSOV
274
WORSHIP
THIS is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows :
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison-bars would Jiold :
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock :
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet :
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o'er him an honouring vault. 10
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call'st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another's eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares. ao
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic lino
Severing rightly his from thine,
Which is human, which divine.
QUATRAINS
S. H.
WITH beams December planets dart
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,
July was in his sunny heart,
October in his liberal hand.
A. H.
HIGH was her heart, and yet was well inclined,
Her manners made of bounty well refined ;
Far capitals, and marble courts, her eye still seemed to
see,
Minstrels, and kings, and high-born dames, and of the
best that be.
'SUTTM CTJIQUE'
WILT thou seal up the avenues of ill ?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.
HUSH !
EVERY thought is public,
Every nook is wide ;
Thy gossips spread each whisper,
And the gods from side to side.
T 2
276 QUATRAINS
ORATOR
HE who has no hands
Perforce must use his tongue ;
Foxes are so cunning
Because they are not strong.
ARTIST
QUIT the hut, frequent the palace,
Reck not what the people say ;
For still, where'er the trees grow biggest,
Huntsmen find the easiest way.
POET
EVER the Poet from the land
Steers his bark, and trims his sail ;
Right out to sea his courses stand,
New worlds to find in pinnace frail.
POET
To clothe the fiery thought
In simple words succeeds,
For still the craft of genius is
To mask a king in weeds.
QUATRAINS 277
BOTANIST
Go thou to thy learned task,
I stay with the flowers of spring :
Do thou of the ages ask
What me the hours will bring.
GARDENER
TRUE Bramin, in the morning meadows wet,
Expound the Vedas of the violet,
Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,
See the plum redden, and the beurre stoop.
FORESTER
HE took the colour of his vest
From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast ;
For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,
So walks the woodman, unespied.
NORTHMAN
THE gale that wrecked you on the sand,
It helped my rowers to row ;
The storm is my best galley hand,
And drives me where I go.
278 QUATRAINS
FROM ALCUIN
THE sea is the road of the bold,
Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,
The pit wherein the streams are rolled,
And fountain of the rains.
EXCELSIOR
OVER his head were the maple buds,
And over the tree was the moon,
And over the moon were the starry studs,
That drop from the angels' shoon.
BORROWING
FROM THE FRENCH
SOME of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived !
NATURE
BOON Nature yields each day a brag which we now
first behold,
And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the
old:
But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks
not why,
Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live
or die.
QUATRAINS 279
FATE
HER planted eye to-day controls,
Is in the morrow most at home,
And sternly calls to being souls
That curse her when they come.
HOEOSCOPE
ERE he was born, the stars of fate
Plotted to make him rich and great :
When from the womb the babe was loosed,
The gate of gifts behind him closed.
POWER
CAST the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat,
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.
CLIMACTERIC
I AM not wiser for my age,
Nor skilful by my grief ;
Life loiters at the book's first page,—
Ah ! could we turn the leaf,
280 QUATRAINS
HERI, CBAS, HODIB
SHINES the last age, the next with hope is seen,
To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between :
Future or Past no richer secret folds,
0 friendless Present ! than thy bosom holds.
MEMORY
NIGHT-DREAMS trace on Memory's wall
Shadows of the thoughts of day,
And thy fortunes, as they fall,
The bias of the will betray.
LOVE
LOVE on his errand bound to go
Can swim the flood, and wade through snow,
Where way is none, 't will creep and wind
And eat through Alps its home to find.
SACRIFICE
THOUGH love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply, —
4 'T is man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.'
QUATRAINS 281
PERICLES
WELL and wisely said the Greek,
Be thou faithful, but not fond ;
To the altar's foot thy fellow seek,
The Furies wait beyond.
CASELLA
TEST of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove ;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
SHAKESPEARE
I SEE all human wits
Are measured but a few,
Unmeasured still my Shakespeare sits,
Lone as the blessed Jew.
HAFIZ
HER passions the shy violet
From Hafiz never hides ;
Love-longings of the raptured bird
The bird to him confides.
282 QUATRAINS
NATURE IN LEASTS
As sings the pine-tree in the wind,
So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine ;
Her strength and soul has laughing France
Shed in each drop of wine.
'AAAKPYN NEMONTAI AIQNA
* A NEW commandment/ said the smiling Muse,
' I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach ; ' —
Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale,
And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore
Hafiz and Shakespeare with their shining choirs.
TRANSLATIONS
SONNET OF MICHEL ANGELO BUONAROTI
NEVER did sculptor's dream unfold
A form which marble doth not hold
In its white block ; yet it therein shall find
Only the hand secure and bold
Which still obeys the mind.
So hide in thee, thou heavenly dame,
The ill I shun, the good I claim ;
I, alas ! not well alive,
Miss the aim whereto I strive.
Not love, nor beauty's pride, Ic
Not fortune, nor thy coldness, can I chide,
If, whilst within thy heart abide
Both death and pity, my unequal skill
Fails of the life, but draws the death and ill.
284 TRANSLATIONS
THE EXILE
FROM THE PERSIAN OF KERMANI
IN Farsistan the violet spreads
Its leaves to the rival sky ;
I ask how far is the Tigris flood,
And the vine that grows thereby ?
Except the amber morning wind,
Not one salutes me here ;
There is no lover in all Bagdat
To offer the exile cheer.
I know that thou, 0 morning wind !
O'er Kernan's meadow bio west, 10
And thou, heart-warming nightingale !
My father's orchard knowest.
The merchant hath stuffs of price,
And gems from the sea- washed strand,
And princes offer me grace
To stay in the Syrian land ;
But what is gold for, but for gifts ?
And dark, without love, is the day ;
And all that I see in Bagdat
Is the Tigris to float me away, 20
TRANSLATIONS 285
FROM HAFIZ
I SAID to heaven that glowed above,
0 hide yon sun-filled zone,
Hide all the stars you boast ;
For, in the world of love
And estimation true,
The heaped-up harvest of the moon
Is worth one barley-corn at most,
The Pleiads' sheaf but two.
IF my darling should depart,
And search the skies for prouder friends,
God forbid my angry heart
In other love should seek amends.
When the blue horizon's hoop
Me a little pinches here,
Instant to my grave I stoop,
And go to find thee in the sphere.
EPITAPH
BETHINK, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest
Mad Destiny this tender stripling played ;
For a warm breast of maiden to his breast,
She laid a slab of marble on his head.
THEY say, through patience, chalk
Becomes a ruby stone ;
Ah, yes ! but by the true heart's blood
The chalk is crimson grown.
286 TRANSLATIONS
FRIENDSHIP
THOU foolish Hafiz ! Say, do churls
Know the worth of Oman's pearls ?
Give the gem which dims the moon
To the noblest, or to none.
DEAREST, where thy shadow falls,
Beauty sits, and Music calls ;
Where thy form and favour come,
All good creatures have their home.
ON prince or bride no diamond stone
Half so gracious ever shone,
As the light of enterprise
Beaming from a young man's eyes.
TRANSLATIONS 287
FROM OMAR CHIAM
EACH spot where tulips prank their state
Has drunk the life-blood of the great ;
The violets yon field which stain
Are moles of beauties time bath slain.
HE who has a thousand friends has not a friend to
spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him every-
where.
ON two days it steads not to run from thy grave,
The appointed, and the unappointed day ;
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.
288 TRANSLATIONS
FROM IBN JEMIN
Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind
serene ; —
A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned
queen ;
And the second, borrowed money, — though the smiling
lender say,
That he will not demand the debt until the Judge-
ment Day.
THE FLUTE
FROM HILALI
HARK what, now loud, now low, the pining flute
complains,
Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that
wail and sigh ;
Saying, Sweetheart ! the old mystery remains, —
If I am I ; thou, thou ; or thou art I ?
TRANSLATIONS 289
TO THE SHAH
FROM IIAFIZ
THY foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,
Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his
spear.
TO THE SHAH
FROM ENWERI
NOT in their houses stand the stars,
But o'er the pinnacles of thine !
TO THE SHAH
FROM ENWERI
FROM thy worth and weight the stars gravitate,
And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise.
290 TRANSLATIONS
SONG OF SEID NIMETOLLAH OF KUHISTAN
[Among the religious customs of the dervishes is an astrono-
mical dance, in which the dervish imitates the movements of the
heavenly bodies, by spinning on his own axis, whilst at the same
time he revolves round the Sheikh in the centre, representing tho
sun ; and, as he spins, ho sings the Song of Seid Nimetollah of
Kuhistan.]
SPIN the ball ! I reel, I burn,
Nor head from foot can I discern,
Nor my heart from love of mine,
Nor the wine-cup from the wine.
All my doing, all my leaving,
Reaches not to my perceiving ;
Lost in whirling spheres I rove,
And know only that I love.
I am seeker of the stone,
Living gem of Solomon ; 10
From the shore of souls arrived,
In the sea of sense I dived ;
But what is land, or what is wave,
To me who only jewels crave ?
Love is the air-fed fire intense,
And my heart the frankincense ;
As the rich aloes flames, I glow,
Yet the censer cannot know.
I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing ;
Stand not, pause not, in my going. 20
Ask not me, as Muftis can,
To recite the Alcoran ;
TRANSLATIONS 291
Well I love the meaning sweet, —
I tread the book beneath my feet.
Lo ! the God's love blazes higher,
Till all difference expire.
What are Moslems ? what are Giaours ?
All are Love's, and all are ours.
I embrace the true believers,
But I reck not of deceivers. 30
Firm to Heaven my bosom clings,
Heedless of inferior things ;
Down on earth there, underfoot,
What men chatter know I not.
U2
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
HYMN
SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, BOSTON, AT THE ORDINATION OF
REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS
(1833)
In Hymm of the Spirit, 1864
WE love the venerable house
Our fathers built to God :
In heaven are kept their grateful vows ;
Their dust endears the sod.
Here holy thoughts a light have shed
From many a radiant face,
And prayers of tender hope have spread
A perfume through the place :
And anxious hearts have pondered here
The mystery of life, 10
And prayed the eternal God to clear
Their doubts, and aid their strife.
From humble tenements around
Came up the pensive train,
And in the church a blessing found
Which filled their homes again.
For faith, and peace, and mighty love,
That from the Godhead flow,
Showed them the life of Heaven above
Springs from the life below. 20
HYMN 293
They live with God, their homes are dust ;
But here their children pray,
And in this fleeting lifetime trust
To find the narrow way.
On him who by the altar stands,
On him Thy blessing fall !
Speak through his lips Thy pure commands,
Thou Heart, that lovest all ! 28
294
GRACE
(Did, January 1842)
How much, Preventing God ! how much I owe
To the defences thou hast round me set :
Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, —
These scorned bondmen were my parapet.
I dare not peep over this parapet
To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below,
The depths of sin to which I had descended,
Had not these me against myself defended.
295
THE THREE DIMENSIONS
(Dial, October 1843)
* ROOM for the spheres ! ' — then first they shined,
And dived into the ample sky ;
' Room ! room ! ' cried the new mankind,
And took the oath of liberty.
Room ! room ! willed the opening mind,
And found it in Variety.
POWER
(I860)
His tongue was framed to music,
And his hand was armed with skill,
His face was the mould of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will.
296
WEALTH
(I860)
WHO shall tell what did befall,
Far away in time, when once,
Over the lifeless ball,
Hung idle stars and suns ?
When god the element obeyed ?
Wings of what wind the lichen bore,
Wafting the puny seeds of power,
Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade ?
And well the primal pioneer
Knew the strong task to it assigned 10
Patient through Heaven's enormous year
To build in matter home for mind.
From air the creeping centuries drew
The matted thicket low and wide,
This must the leaves of ages strew
The granite slap to clothe and hide,
Ere wheat can wave its golden pride.
What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled
(In dizzy aeons dim and mute
The 'reeling brain can ill compute) 20
Copper and iron, lead and gold ?
What oldest star the fame can save
Of races perishing to pave ,
The planet with a floor of lime ?
Dust is their pyramid and mole :
WEALTH 297
Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed
Under the tumbling mountain's breast,
In the safe herbal of the coal ?
But when the quarried means were piled,
All is waste and worthless, till 30
Arrives the wise selecting will,
And, out of slime and chaos, Wit
Draws the threads of fair and fit.
Then temples rose, and towns, and marts,
The shop of toil, the hall of arts ;
Then flew the sail across the seas
To feed the Nor^h from tropic trees ;
The storm-wind wove, the torrent span,
Where they were bid the rivers ran ;
New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, 40
Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam.
Then docks were built, and crops were stored,
And ingots added to the hoard.
But, though light-headed man forget,
Remembering Matter pays her debt :
Still, though her motes and masses, draw
Electric thrills and ties of Law,
Which bind the strength of Nature wild
To the conscience of a child. 49
298
ILLUSIONS
(I860)
FLOW, flow the waves hated,
Accursed, adored,
The waves of mutation :
No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not ;
Who seem to die live.
House you were born in,
Friends of your spring-time,
Old man and young maid,
Day's toil and its guerdon, 10
They are all vanishing,
Fleeing to fables,
Cannot be moored.
See the stars through them,
Through treacherous marbles.
Know, the stars yonder,
The stars everlasting,
Are fugitive also,
And emulate, vaulted,
The lambent heat-lightning, 20
And fire-fly's flight.
When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation,
Beholding the shimmer,
The wild dissipation,
ILLUSIONS 299
And, out of endeavour
To change and to flow,
The gas becomes solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to be things, 30
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world, —
Then first shalt thou know,
That in the wild turmoil,
Horsed on the Proteus,
Thou ridest to power,
And to endurance. 37
300
BOSTON
SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT PEUS NOBIS
(Atlantic MontUy, 1876)
THE rocky nook with hill-tops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms ;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.
And where they went on trade intent
They did what freemen can,
Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man. 10
The world was made for honest trade, —
To plant and eat be none afraid.
The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told ;
Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
4 Like us, be free and bold ! '
The honest waves refuse to slaves
The empire of the ocean caves.
Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough, and more ; — 20
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor ;
For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labour overpay.
BOSTON 301
The noble craftsman we promote,
Disown the knave and fool ;
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land, or life, if freedom fail ? 30
We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights, and shall, —
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
The wild rose and the barberry thorn
Hung out their summer prido
Where now on heated pavements worn
The feet of millions stride.
Fair rose the planted hills behind
The good town on the bay ; 40
And where the western hills declined
The prairie stretched away.
What rival towers majestic soar
Along the stormy coast, —
Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore, —
If Boston knew the most !
They laughed to know the world so wide ;
The mountains said, ' Good-day !
We greet you well, you Saxon men,
Up with your towns, and stay ! ' 50
The world was made for honest trade, —
To plant and eat be none afraid.
302 BOSTON
' For you/ they said, * no barriers be,
For you no sluggard rest ;
Each street leads downward to the sea,
Or landward to the West.'
0 happy town beside the sea,
Whose roads lead everywhere to all ;
Than thine no deeper moat can be,
No stouter fence, no steeper wall ! 60
Bad news from George on the English throne :
* You are thriving well/ said he,
* Now by these presents be it known
You shall pay us a tax on tea ;
JTis very small, — no load at all, —
Honour enough that we send the call/
' Not so/ said Boston, * good my lord,
We pay your governors here
Abundant for their bed and board,
Six thousand pounds a year. 70
(Your Highness knows our homely word,)
Millions for self-government,
But for tribute never a cent.9
The cargo came ! and who could blame
If Indians seized the tea,
And, chest by chest, let down the same,
Into the laughing sea?
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land, or life, if freedom fail ?
BOSTON 303
The townsmen braved the English king, • 80
Found friendship in the French,
And Honour joined the patriot ring
Low on their wooden bench,
0 bounteous seas that never fail !
0 day remembered yet !
0 happy port that spied the sail
Which wafted Lafayette !
Pole-star of light in Europe's night,
That never faltered from the right.
Kings shook with fear, old empires crave 90
The secret force to find
Which fired the little state to savo
The rights of all mankind.
But right is might through all the world ;
Province to province faithful clung,
Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,
Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung.
The sea returning day by day
Restores the world -wide mart ;
So let each dweller on the Bay too
Fold Boston in his heart,
Till these echoes be choked with snows,
Or over the town blue ocean flows.
Let the blood of her hundred thousands
Throb in each manly vein ;
And the wits of all her wisest
Make sunshine in her brain.
For you can teach the lightning speech,
And round the globe your voices reach.
304 BOSTON
And each shall care for other, no
And each to each shall bend,
To the poor a noble brother,
To the good an equal friend.
A blessing through the ages thus
Shield all thy roofs and towers !
God ivith the fathers, so with us,
Thou darling town of ours !
MOTTOES TO THE 'ESSAYS'
HISTORY
THERE is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all :
And where it cometh, all things are ;
And it cometh every where.
I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.
306
PRUDENCE
THEME no poet gladly sung,
Fair to old and foul to young,
Scorn not thou the love of parts
And the articles of arts.
Grandeur of the perfect sphere
Thanks the atoms that cohere.
GIFTS
GIFTS of one who loved me,—
'Twas high time they came ;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.
307
CIRCLES
NATURE centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere ;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.
INTELLECT
Go, speed the stars of Thought
On to their shining goals ; —
The sower scatters broad his seed,
The wheat thou strew'st be souls.
EM ERSOX
308
THE POET
A MOODY child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray :
They overleapt the horizon's edge,
Searched with Apollo's privilege ;
Through man, and woman, and sea, and star,
Saw the dance of nature forward far ;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times,
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. xo
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
309
NATURE
THE rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery :
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its labouring heart,
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Spirit that lurks each form within
Beckons to spirit of its kin ;
Self -kindled every atom glows,
And hints the future which it owes.
310
NOMINALIST AND REALIST
IN countless upward-striving waves
The moon-drawn tide-wave strives ;
In thousand far-transplanted grafts
The parent fruit survives ;
So, in the new-born millions,
The perfect Adam lives.
Not less are summer-mornings dear
To every child they wake,
And each with novel life his sphere
Fills for his proper sake.
INDEX OF TITLES
'AAAKPTN NEMONTAI AIHNA,
282.
Adirondacs, Tho, 193.
A. H., 275.
Alcuin, From, 278.
Alphonso of Castile, 22.
Amulet, Tho, 101.
Apology, Tho, 121.
Art, 271.
Artist, 276.
Astraca, 82.
Bacchus, 127.
Beauty, 269.
Beauty, Ode to, 92.
Berrying, 42.
Blight, 152.
Borrowing, 278.
Boston, 300.
Boston Hymn, 211.
Botanist, 277.
Brahma, 205.
Casella, 281.
Character, 266.
Chartist's Complaint, The, 235.
Circles, 307.
Climacteric, 279.
Compensation, 86, 262.
Culture, 267.
Days, 234.
Day's Ration, The, 150.
Dirge, 158.
Each and All, 6.
Earth-song, 34.
Ellen at the South, To, 98.
Enweri, Translations from, 289.
Epitaph, 285.
Eros, 103.
Etienne de la Bo6ce, 84.
Eva, To, 100.
Excelsior, 278.
Exile, 284.
Experience, 261.
Fable, 77.
Fate, 28, 207, 279.
Flute, 288.
Forbearance, 87.
Forerunners, 89.
Forester, 277.
Freedom, 208.'
Friendship, 268, 286.
Gardener, 277.
Ghaselle, 147.
Gifts, 306.
Give all to love, 96.
Good-bye, 36.
Grace, 294.
Guy, 30.
Hafiz, 281.
Hafiz, Translations from, 141,
147, 285, 289.
Hamatreya, 33.
Heri, Cras, Hodie, 280.
Hermione, 104.
Heroism, 265.
Hilali, From, 288.
History, 305.
Holidays, 139.
Horoscope, 279.
House, The, 132.
Humble-Bee, The, 39.
Hush, 275.
Hymn, 170, 292.
Ibn Jemin, From, 288.
Illusions, 298.
Initial, Daemonic, and Celes-
tial Love, 107.
In Momoriam, E. B. E., 257.
Intellect, 307.
312
INDEX OF TITLES
J. W., To, 27.
Last Farewell, The, 255.
Letters, 223.
Loss and Gain, 130.
Love, 280.
Love and Thought, 220.
Lover's Petition, 221.
Manners, 270.
May-Day, 171.
Memory, 280.
Merlin, 122, 125.
Merlin's Song, 225.
Merops, 131.
Michel Angelo Buonaroti, Son-
net of, 283.
Mithridates, 25.
Monadnoc, 63.
Musketaquid, 155.
My Garden, 236.
Nature, 230, 278, 309.
Nature in Leasts, 282.
Nemesis, 206.
Nominalist and Realist, 310.
Northman, 277.
Ode, 30, 78.
Ode Sung in the Town Hall,
209.
Ode to Beauty, 92.
Omar Chiam, From, 287.
Orator, 276.
Painting and Sculpture, 140.
Park, The, 88.
Past, The, 254.
Pericles, 281.
Poet, The, 276, 308.
Politics, 264.
Power, 229, 279, 295.
Problem, The, 8.
Prudence, 306.
Quatrains, 275.
Rhea, To, 11.
Rhodora, The, 38.
Romany Girl, The, 232.
Rubies, 224.
Saadi, 133.
Sacrifice, 280.
Sea-Shore, 243.
S. H., 275.
Shah, To the, 289.
Shakespeare, 281.
Snow-Storm, The, 43.
Solution, 227.
Song of Nature, 245.
Song of Seid Nimetollah, 29(
Sphinx, The, 1.
Spiritual Laws, 272.
Sursum Corda, 91.
Suum Cuique, 85, 275.
Tact, 32.
Terminus, 252.
Test, The, 226.
Thine eyes still shined, 102.
Three Dimensions, The, 295.
Threnody, 160.
Titmouse, The, 239.
To Ellen, at the South, 98.
To Eva, 100.
ToJ. W.,27.
To Rhea, 11.
Two Rivers, 249.
Una, 222.
Unity, 273.
Uriel, 16.
Visit, The, 14.
Voluntaries, 215.
Waldeinsamkeit, 250.
Wealth, 296.
Woodnotes, 44, 50.
World-Soul, The, 18.
Worship, 274.
Xenophanes, 149,
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
PAGE
A moody child and wildly wise ..... 308
( A new commandment/ said the smiling Muse . . 282
A ruddy drop of manly blood ..... 268
Already blushes in thy cheek 206
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky . .43
As sings the pine-tree in the wind .... 282
As sunbeams stream through liberal spaco ... 50
Askest, * How long thou shait stay ? ' . . . .14
Because I was content with these poor fields . . .155
Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest . . . 285
Boon Nature yields each day ..... 278
Bring me wine, but wine which never grew . . .127
Burly, dozing humble-beo ...... 39
Butler, fetch the ruby wine . . . . . .141
By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave . . .149
By the rude bridge that arched the flood . . .170
Can rules or tutors educate ...... 267
Cast the bantling on the rocks ..... 279
Damsels of Time, the hypocritic Days .... 234
Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring . . .171
Day ! hast thou two faces ...... 235
Dearest, where thy shadow falls 286
Deep in the man sits fast his fate .... 207
Each spot where tulips prank their state . . . 287
Each the herald is who wrote ..... 82
Ere he was born, tho stars of fate .... 279
Ever the Poet from the land 276
Every day brings a ship 223
Every thought is public 275
Farewell, ye lofty spires ...... 255
Flow, flow the waves hated ...... 298
For this present, hard 44
From fall to spring the russet acorn . . . .139
From thy worth and weight the stars gravitate . . 289
Gifts of one who loved me 306
Give all to love 96
Give me truths ........ 152
314 INDEX OF FIRST LINES
PAGE
Give to barrows, trays, and pans . . . . .271
Go, speed the stars of Thought *307
Go thou to thy learned task ..... 277
Gold and iron are good ...... 264
Good-bye, proud world ! I'm going home ... 36
Good Heart, that ownost all 221
Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 270
Hark what, now loud, now low ..... 288
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun . . 87
He took the colour of his vest ..... 277
He who has a thousand friends ..... 287
He who has no hands 276
Her passions the shy violet . . . . . .281
Her planted eye to-day controls ..... 279
High was her heart ....... 275
His tongue was framed to music ..... 295
How much, Preventing God ! how much I owe . . 294
I, Alphonso, live and learn . . . . . . * 22
I am not wiser for my ago ...... 279
I am the Muse who sung alway ..... 227
I cannot spare water or wine ..... 25
I do not count the hours I spend .... 250
I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea . . . 243
I hung my verses in the wind ..... 226
I like a church ; I like a cowl ..... 8
I mourn upon this battle-field ..... 257
I said to heaven that glowed above .... 285
I see all human wits ....... -281
I serve you not, if you I follow ..... 84
If I could put my woods in song .... 236
If my darling should depart ..... 285
If the red slayer think he slays ..... 205
In countless upward-striving waves . . . .310
In Fa rs is tan the violet spreads ..... 284
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes . . 38
It fell in the ancient periods . . . . .16
It is time to be old 252
Knows he who tills this lonely field . . . .158
Little thinks, in the field, yon red -cloaked clown . . 6
Long I followed happy guides ..... 89
Love on his errand bound to go . . . , . 280
Low and mournful be the strain 215
Man was made of social earth 112
May be true what I had heard ' 42
Mine and yours ........ 34
Mine are the night and morning ..... 245
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 315
PAGE
Minott, Lee, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint . . .33
Mortal mixed of middle clay . . . . .30
Nature centres into balls ...... 307
Never did sculptor's dream unfold .... 283
Night-dreams trace on memory's wall .... 280
Not in their houses stand the stars .... 289
0 fair and stately maid, whose eyes . . . .100
O tenderly the haughty day ..... 209
Of Merlin wise I learned a song ..... 225
Of Paradise, O hermit wise ...... 147
Olympian bards who sung . . . . . . 308
On a mound an Arab lay ...... 104
On prince or bride no diamond stone .... 286
On two days it steads not ...... 287
Once I wished I might rehearse ..... 208
Over his head were the maple buds .... 278
Quit the hut, frequent the palace . 276
4 Room for the spheres ! ' . . . . . 295
Roving, roving, as it seems ...... 222
Ruby wine is drunk by knaves ..... 265
Seek not the spirit, if it hide . . . . .91
Set not thy foot on graves ...... 27
She is gamesome and good ...... 231
Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen . . 280
Some of your hurts you have cured .... 278
Space is ample, east and west ..... 273
Spin the ball ! I reel, I burn 290
Test of the poet is knowledge of love .... 281
Thanks to the morning light . . . . .18
That you are fair or wise is vain .... 28
The debt is paid 254
The gale that wrecked you on the sand . . .277
The green grass is bowing ...... 98
The living Heaven thy prayers respect .... 272
The lords of life, the lords of life .... 261
The mountain and the squirrel . . . . .77
The prosperous and beautiful ..... 88
The rain has spoiled the farmer's day .... 85
The rhyme of the poet . . . . . .125
The rocky nook with hill-tops three .... 300
The rounded world is fair to see ..... 309
The sea is the road of the bold . 278
The sense of the world is short . . . . .103
The sinful painter drapes his goddess warm . . .140
The South-wind brings . , * . . , .160
The Sphinx is drowsy . . . . . . . 1
316 INDEX OF FIRST LINES
PAGE
The sun goes down, and with him takes , . .232
The sun set, but set not his hope .... 266
The wings of Time are black and white . . .262
The word of the Lord by night 211
Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes . , . .11
Theme no poet gladly sung 306
There is no architect 132
There is no great and no small . 305
They brought me rubies from the mine . . . 224
They say, through patience, chalk .... 285
Thine eyes still shined for" me, though far . . . . 102
Think me not unkind and rude . . . . .121
This is he, who, felled by foes ..... 274
Thou foolish Hafiz ! Say, do churls .... 286
Though loath to grieve . . . . • . .78
Though love repine, and reason chafe .... 280
Thousand minstrels woke within me * . .63
Thy foes to hunt 289
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit . . . ' ^ . . 249
Thy trivial harp will never please . . 'f .122
To clothe the fiery thought ...... 276
Trees in groves 1 133
True Bramin, in the morning meadows wet . •„ . 277
Two things thou shalt not long for 288
Two well-assorted travellers use . . . »\ • 220
Venus, when her son was lost . . . .**' . 107
Virtue runs before the Muse 130
Was never form and never face . . . . . 269
We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends . 193
We love the venerable house . . . * . *. 292
Well and wisely said the Greek . . . . % * \ 281
What boots it, thy virtue * v . 32
What care I, so they stand the same . % . - . 131
When I was born *. 150
* Whether is better the gift or the donor ' . . .60
Who gave thee, 0 Beauty 92
Who shall tell what did befall 296
Why should I keep holiday . . . . . t \ 86
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill . . . .% 275
Winters know , 230
Wise and polite, — and if I drew 193
With beams December planete dart . . . .275
Tou shall not be overbold 239
Your picture smiles as first it smiled . . . .101
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